Dimitry Nakhla | Babylon Capital®
RT @realroseceline: Thoughts on $NFLX buying $WBD:

$NFLX is buying $WBD for about $83b using mostly cash and a small amount of stock. The deal gives $NFLX the entire Warner Bros studio HBO and major franchises like Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Friends and more. $NFLX will keep Warner Bros operating the same way including theatrical releases.

The logic behind the deal is straightforward. $NFLX gets a massive library of proven hits which strengthens the service and gives members more to watch. Creators get more chances to work with top tier IP and scale it globally. Shareholders get more value because stronger content drives more members more engagement and more revenue. $NFLX also expects $2-3b in annual cost savings and says the deal will be accretive by year two.

$WBD shareholders will receive $23.25 in cash and about $4.50 in $NFLX stock for each share depending on where $NFLX trades at closing. Before the deal closes $WBD will spin off its global networks division (CNN, TNT, etc) in Q3 next year. The deal still needs regulatory approval and shareholder approval but both boards have signed off and $NFLX expects to close in 12 to 18 months.

Here is the part most people miss. At $NFLX scale $83b is not the big deal people imagine. Spread across hundreds of millions of subscribers the entire cost can be covered by a small price increase of $1-2 dollars a month over time. $NFLX has raised prices before and almost no one cancels because the value is still great. And when you compare it to buying HBO on its own for around $20 a month getting all of that content plus the entire Warner Bros library for an extra $2 is almost nothing from a consumer perspective.

This is why the headline looks huge but the economics are simple. Scale turns big numbers into manageable ones and $NFLX is operating at a scale very few companies ever reach.

🌹
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Quiver Quantitative
President Trump was just awarded the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. https://t.co/d6V6mA6Wmt
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EndGame Macro
The Guidance Mirage And Why Corporate Optimism Is Rising While the Economy Quietly Breaks

This chart makes it look like companies are thriving again with more S&P 500 firms raising earnings guidance, climbing back toward levels we saw during periods of real strength. But guidance isn’t the economy. It’s a forecast. And forecasts just like actuarial assumptions are built on models, incentives, and a lot of wishful thinking.

That’s why charts like this can be so deceiving. Companies don’t start with neutral expectations, they start with lowballed numbers they know they can beat. They update guidance against analyst consensus that’s been revised downward all year. And the firms struggling the most usually stop giving guidance altogether, quietly exiting the data set. What’s left is the healthiest slice of the market, not the full picture.

Guidance Also Lags…Badly

The other thing no one mentions is the timing problem. Earnings expectations almost always lag real economic deterioration. In 2008, forward earnings estimates didn’t actually roll over until the summer, just a few weeks before Lehman collapsed even though markets had been breaking down for a year. Analysts stayed optimistic right up until the crisis was unavoidable, and then expectations fell off a cliff after the real damage was already done.

That’s how models work. They extrapolate the recent past. They don’t capture the turn until it’s staring them in the face.

We’re seeing that same dynamic now. Earnings guidance looks fine because management teams are living inside spreadsheets, not inside the consumer credit data or the refinancing math. They’re smoothing out the very bumps the economy is already tripping over.

The Real Economy Doesn’t Look Like This Chart

If you step outside the S&P’s polished reporting cycle, the broader U.S. economy is flashing stress from multiple angles…

• Corporate bankruptcies: Large U.S. bankruptcies are running at their highest pace in 15 years, matching levels from the post Great Financial Crisis.

• Layoffs: Announced layoffs are more than 1.17 million for the year, the most since 2020 led by tech, telecom, retail, and government sector cuts.

• Consumer strain: Household debt is at $18.6 trillion, and delinquencies in auto loans, student loans, and credit cards are all moving higher, especially among younger and subprime borrowers.

• The maturity wall: Roughly $9–12 trillion in government debt and at least $1.8 trillion in commercial debt will need refinancing at much higher rates by the end of 2026. This alone pressures growth and forces the Fed into an easing cycle.

When you look at the full landscape, the idea that companies are raising guidance should feel a little like reading a sunny actuarial projection for a pension fund that’s simultaneously bleeding cash. The numbers may be technically correct, but the assumptions are doing all the lifting.

What This Really Means

The disconnect between rising guidance and falling economic fundamentals is exactly what we saw in the run up to the 2008 collapse. Markets were already rolling over while analysts were still projecting stable earnings. Expectations didn’t adjust until the shock was already happening.

Guidance is a mood. The economy is a balance sheet. And right now, the mood looks better than the math.
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WealthyReadings
RT @WealthyReadings: Stop complaining about the $PYPL CFO telling the truth.

Weakness is here for longer. The mistake isn't on them for being honest; it's on us for selecting a weaker stock than we thought.

Accept the truth and move on. Don't blame it on them.

Focus on your next move. That is all that matters.
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WealthyReadings
RT @WealthyReadings: $ALAB is setting up to be one of the major winners of the next AI narrative: optimization.

The bulk of compute has already been deployed. The next frontier isn’t “more GPUs”, it’s better use of the hardware we have and will have, both on software & hardware.

Hardware optimization is what $ALAB does.

They build the invisible backbone of AI data centers, systems that move data faster, smoother and with far less waste. They eliminate the bottlenecks that slow AI down.

Why this matters:
🔹 Every AI giant is now obsessed with efficiency, energy is capped and data centers can’t scale fast enough so they need to optimize.
🔹 Bigger models + more demand = more data movement = more & larger bottlenecks.
🔹 Every second of compute lost or non optimized costs companies more than the hardware to fix that situation.
🔹 The future is about squeezing every ounce of performance out of existing infrastructure

That's what $ALAB proposes.

As AI continues to scale, the next winners won’t be the companies selling volume anymore, they’ll be the ones unlocking above average optimization.

The leap from “great” to “perfect” is where the next trillion-dollar value will be created. And only a few specialized players can deliver that.

$ALAB might be one of the biggest opportunities in that narrative.

Details below 👇
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memenodes
Family:
you bought bitcoin are you dumb, it's a scam

Meanwhile your favorite uncle : https://t.co/2CfJ4OOhnz
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memenodes
Me as the cool uncle with no kids & wife doing whatever I want https://t.co/0nkIIx2uOU
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memenodes
https://t.co/2vROX8boSw

Boys without girlfriends, how’s life ? - ຸ
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EndGame Macro
https://t.co/CoJMQYx2FS

Recent Layoff Announcements:

1. US Government: 307,000 employees
2. UPS: 48,000 employees
3. Amazon: Up to 30,000 employees
4. Intel: 24,000 employees
5. Nestle: 16,000 employees
6. Verizon: 15,000 employees
7. Accenture: 11,000 employees
8. Ford: 11,000 employees
9. Novo Nordisk: 9,000 employees
10. Microsoft: 7,000 employees
11. PwC: 5,600 employees
12. Salesforce: 4,000 employees
13. IBM: 2,700 employees
14. American Airlines: 2,700 employees
15. Paramount: 2,000 employees
16. Target: 1,800 employees
17. General Motors: 1,500 employees
18. Applied Materials: 1,444 employees
19. Kroger: 1,000 employees
20. Meta: 600 employees

Where will all these people go? - The Kobeissi Letter
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EndGame Macro
The Consumer Is Running Out of Road

This BEA release is basically an MRI of the American consumer for September 2025. It shows where income came from, where money went, how much inflation absorbed, and what was actually left over. On the surface, everything looks steady. But once you take the nominal shine off, the picture gets a lot more fragile.

The Surface Level Story

Personal income rose 0.4%, disposable income rose 0.3%, and spending rose 0.3%. That’s the clean headline. But the real economy doesn’t run on nominal dollars, it runs on purchasing power. Adjust for inflation and the growth and it nearly vanishes. Real disposable income barely moved, and real spending was flat. Consumers shelled out more money, but they didn’t get more out of it. They simply paid more for the same life.

Where the Cracks Actually Are

Almost the entire increase in spending came from services…about $63 billion out of the $65 billion increase. Goods barely budged, and durable goods slipped. That’s typical late cycle behavior where people keep paying for what they can’t skip like housing, insurance, health care while pulling back on the optional, confidence driven purchases.

Debt service keeps tightening the squeeze. Personal interest payments rose again and are running near $586 billion annualized. It’s not the kind of thing that triggers an immediate recession, but it chips away at household capacity a little more each month. Add to that a savings rate stuck at 4.7%, well below pre COVID norms, and you’re looking at households with very little buffer.

What the Strong Parts Really Mean

Some parts of the report look strong, but only at first glance…

• Wage gains are still rising, but slower than earlier in the year and slower than many services that drive inflation. Nominal gains without real improvement don’t help; they just keep people on the treadmill.

• Dividend income jumped, but that tells you how wealthier households are doing, not the median family. It’s not a broad economic signal.

• Services spending looks robust until you recognize the drivers that include housing, insurance, health care. These aren’t signs of confidence; they’re signs of obligation. Spending holds up here because people are cornered, not because they feel great.

The Recessionary Signals

The report doesn’t shout recession, but it quietly sends all the classic early warnings.

• Real spending stalled.
• Durable goods slipped, an early and reliable signal.
• Interest costs are rising, eating into budgets.
• The savings rate is weak, leaving no room for shocks.
• Service inflation is still running much hotter than goods inflation, and everyone pays for that.

If you’ve lived through enough cycles, you recognize this setup where the top line still looks fine, but the underlying momentum is gone.

My Takeaway

This is the kind of report you see right before a slowdown becomes obvious. Nothing dramatic. Just a steady erosion of real momentum. Nominal numbers climb, real numbers stall, debt costs rise, and spending shifts in exactly the way it does when households start feeling heavy.

The U.S. consumer is still on their feet.
They’re just not moving forward anymore.
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EndGame Macro
Japan may not be losing control, but the current setup isn’t as clean or intentional as it looks. The BOJ can guide yields because it effectively is the JGB market, but that doesn’t shield Japan from the broader forces that matter when the global cycle turns. A weaker yen helps exporters when demand is stable, yet if the U.S., Europe, and China all soften at the same time, Japan absorbs the inflation from higher import prices without getting the growth boost from trade. And the whole strategy depends on the yen weakening gradually and not snapping. If the yen strengthens quickly, Japanese pension funds, insurers, and banks face FX losses large enough to force selling of U.S. assets, which is the opposite of the steady inflow supporting global markets that Nicoletos highlights.

That’s where Japan’s real vulnerability sits. This is its first meaningful tightening cycle in decades, layered on top of the world’s largest debt load, an aging population, and rising geopolitical friction with China. The BOJ has tools, but the transition itself with higher yields, a policy dependent currency, and heavy exposure to global risk appetite introduces pressures that don’t show up until growth rolls over. Japan isn’t out of control, but it’s moving into a phase where control becomes harder to maintain, not because the bond market turns on them, but because the global environment might.

Japan hasn’t “lost control” of anything.

Rising JGB yields + a weaker Yen aren’t a crisis, they’re the strategy.

A central bank that:

• owns ~50% of its own bond market
• pioneered QE, ZIRP, NIRP & YCC
• is quietly boosting exporters, pressuring China & still funding U.S. markets

…is not being “forced” into anything.

The #Yen isn’t crashing because #Japan lost control. It’s weakening because Japan wants it to.

My thoughts: https://t.co/D7cTqJVQzC - Michael Nicoletos
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