| | Good morning. Madison Square Garden Sports has been on an unbelievable winning streak. Not so much its teams, though. Shares in the New York City-based holding company rocketed 13.9% on Wednesday after its board voted to explore spinning off the trophy-challenged New York Knicks and New York Rangers, Manhattan's NBA and NHL teams, into separate publicly traded companies. Wall Street has historically shown a relative lack of enthusiasm for sports teams, which go for much higher prices in private markets where the scarce assets are coveted by the mega-rich who buy them because they can. For example, MSG Sports has a market capitalization of $8 billion, but Fortune estimated in October that the private market value of the Knicks alone is $9.75 billion, a 30% year-over-year increase, and that of the Rangers is $4 billion, a 14% increase. Spinning off the franchises could better position them for minority stake sales or take-private deals that would amount to a win for shareholders. Given that the Rangers last won a Stanley Cup in 1994 and the Knicks last won an NBA championship in 1973, it would be nice to get a win for the fans, too, at some point. | | | | | That was an unexpected and much-needed shot in the arm for Moderna. On Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration announced it would begin reviewing the biotech firm's new mRNA-based flu vaccine — just a week after the agency initially rejected Moderna's application, citing flaws in the company's research design. The reversal is not just a major win for Moderna, but the entire vaccine-making industry, which has struggled in an era of a, shall we say, far more skeptical FDA. Political Side Effects If you recall, mRNA vaccines were seen just a few years ago as a breakthrough, allowing pharma firms to revise and update vaccines to respond to new viral threats far more quickly than old-school dead-virus-based jabs. Better yet, promising signs reveal the technology could have applications for warding off chronic diseases and even cancers. Now, the miracle product of Trump 1.0's Covid moonshot has turned into a headache for pharma firms in the Trump 2.0 era. While the science and medical communities still see the new vaccine type as largely safe, the FDA, under Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is warier. The twist of fate has turned the entire vaccine-making industry upside-down: - The number of distributed flu vaccine doses has fallen to a roughly 10-year low this season, according to the CDC, with some researchers pointing to medical misinformation. Major flu shot maker CSL is undergoing major cost-cutting amid declining demand, while Moderna has canceled projects to develop mRNA vaccines for ailments including chicken pox, shingles and herpes.
- Investors, too, have taken note of the new landscape. Last year, venture capital firms invested just $174 million in biotech firms using mRNA technology to develop vaccines, down from $510 million in 2023, according to GlobalData.
"We are more wary," biotech investor Peter Kolchinsky recently told The New York Times. "It's clear that some vaccines are going to be harder to get through than others, so we have to invest more cautiously, if at all."   Bank Shot: The impact for Moderna has been acute. The US government last year canceled some $700 million in contracts with the company to develop a bird flu vaccine; its share price is still down some 90% from its 2021 peak. The FDA reversed course on the company's flu vaccine after Moderna said it would split the preventative by age bracket, seeking an accelerated approval timeline for patients over 64 and a standard review for those between 50 and 64, while agreeing to conduct an additional study for patients under 50. Shares of the company popped more than 6% on the good news on Wednesday. Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | | | | | Photo via Pernas Research | | | | | | New AI tools can produce websites and automate enterprise workflows in a matter of seconds, like magicians snapping their fingers to reveal not a dove or rabbit but updated CRM records. And, this month, that's been the scariest thing on Wall Street. Fear that this magic touch could replace the role of software companies has obliterated billions in market value. On Wednesday, however, most of the affected firms got a break. The Long and the Short of IT The iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF has tumbled more than 23% this year, as leading software companies including Adobe, Salesforce and ServiceNow have declined by more than a fifth. What got us here is simple. New and updated AI models like Google's Gemini 3 and Anthropic's Claude 4.6 appear capable of making tools that could compete with software makers, which threatens to squeeze their profit margins like the oranges at an AI startup's in-house juice bar. Shares in UK software group Pinewood Technologies slid over 30% this week after private equity firm Apax Partners walked away from a $776 million acquisition offer. By mid-week, sentiment appeared to shift: the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETF rose 1.3% on Wednesday, while AI hyperscalers like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, whose shares slumped amid concerns about spending plans, also gained. It wasn't all rosy, though: Cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks sank 6.8% after its guidance disappointed Wall Street despite better-than-expected second-quarter results and CEO Nikesh Arora's assertion that AI isn't replacing cybersecurity software "any time soon." Some analysts say the selloff may be partially misguided: - "The market is selling indiscriminately," JPMorgan analysts wrote earlier this month. For those who "believe Claude Code is just another DeepSeek moment," they added, "current software valuations are worth a look if you want to find an entry point."
- Last week, Goldman Sachs rolled out a list of stocks the bank expects to "recover from the recent software selloff," among them Cloudflare, CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Oracle, and — wouldn't you know it — Palo Alto Networks. On the other hand, Goldman's list of "lag behinds" includes Accenture, Monday, Salesforce, DocuSign and Duolingo.
Executive Decision: Among the gainers in the software sector on Wednesday was ServiceNow, whose shares rose 1.8% thanks to a bold vote of confidence from insiders. A day earlier, executives at the cloud computing and business workflow firm canceled regularly scheduled stock sales and CEO Bill McDermott pledged to buy $3 million in shares, essentially declaring they believe they're sitting on a bargain. Written by Sean Craig | | | | | | | | | Photo via Betterment | Betterment's Cash Reserve helps keep your money safe as it grows and currently offers an APY of 3.25%, which is 8x the national average. New customer offer: Open a Cash Reserve account and make a qualifying deposit to get a 0.65% APY boost on your savings for 3 months. Activate offer.*  | | | | | | | | Nearly 20 years after the debut of its famous "Think Different" ad campaign, Apple continues to live up to the slogan. Increasingly, investors are noticing. The Cupertino, California-based company's 40-day correlation to the Nasdaq 100 fell to just 0.21 last week (a correlation of 1 equates to perfect alignment), according to recent Bloomberg data, marking the starkest difference between the iPhone-maker and the tech-heavy index since 2006. It's a trend that started early last year and looks likely to continue. Return of the Mac Actually, Apple isn't so much "thinking different" as it is "thinking like John D. Rockefeller," who made bank operating as an oil refiner while letting others take the costly risk of oil drilling. Today, as Apple's Big Tech brethren embark on one of the greatest capex ventures in human history, Apple is spending pennies in comparison and relying on third-party models to power its in-device AI ambitions. And as AI cannibalizes software firms left and right, Apple continues to sell hardware by the boatload. It's enough to differentiate the company's stock from its peers: - Apple has climbed more than 7% over the past month, compared with a slight decline in the broader Nasdaq and a nearly 5% skid in the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF (which includes Apple).
- On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the company is accelerating development of three AI-powered devices: smart glasses, a small device that could be worn as a pendant or a pin, and new versions of AirPods featuring a camera system. The devices will be built around the planned AI version of Siri.
"Apple is a sleeping giant in AI," Nick Grous, an associate portfolio manager at ARK Invest, posted on X this week. "In past platform shifts, the winner wasn't the first app; it was the company that controlled the hardware and the ecosystem. Apple still does." Memory Game: Perhaps Apple's biggest roadblock? Soaring memory costs, which are bedeviling the entire tech industry amid the hyperscaling of AI data centers. In January, CEO Tim Cook warned that the memory shortage — and resulting price hikes — could eat into margins as soon as the current quarter. Meanwhile, AI firms are outbidding the company for memory chips from key suppliers for the first time in, well, recent memory. Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | - Champs on the Block: The NFL's Seattle Seahawks are officially for sale less than a month after winning the Super Bowl, the estate of the late Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen announced Wednesday.
- Early Exit: European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde plans to exit her role before her term ends in October 2027 to allow her country's outgoing president, Emmanuel Macron, to have a say on her successor.
- Done With Political News? Check out our friends at Nice News, an email digest sent to nearly 1 million readers with only uplifting stories. Join for free here.**
** Partner | | | | Disclaimer *Cash Reserve offered by Betterment LLC and requires a Betterment Securities brokerage account. Betterment is not a bank. Learn More. National average savings account annual percentage yield (APY) (as of 12/10/2025) for savings accounts under $100,000, per FDIC. Annual percentage yield (variable) is 3.25% as of 12/12/2025, plus a 0.65% boost ("APY Boost") for new clients with a qualifying deposit. $10 min deposit for base APY. Terms apply; if the base APY changes, the Boosted APY will change. | | |
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment