"I know some of you are surprised we are making this acquisition," Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Wall Street analysts on a call this morning, in what may be the understatement of the year.

Once Warner Bros. Discovery completes its split between its movie studio business and its cable TV business in 2026, Netflix will acquire the film studio as well as streaming service HBO Max in a deal with an equity value of $72 billion. Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery jumped 6.28% on the news.

We’ve seen this movie before

Sarandos stated just last quarter that Netflix had “no interest in owning legacy media networks,” yet the company is now making its biggest bet on legacy media ever. It’s a surprising choice, given that Netflix has spent more than a decade building franchises from scratch; a slow and expensive process.

But scooping up Warner Bros. Discovery, and with it HBO, gives it instant access to some of the world’s most durable IP, including Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and Batman—a shortcut that Sarandos framed as a “rare opportunity” to supercharge Netflix’s content library and expand into franchises with built-in global audiences.

History isn’t exactly on Netflix’s side. In 2000, online service provider AOL bought Time Warner for what was then a record-setting $183 billion, a media mega merger that quickly became one of the most infamous corporate mismatches in history, ending in layoffs, regulatory scrutiny, and a messy breakup less than a decade later.

Co-CEO Greg Peters pushed back on the skepticism, arguing that previous media mergers failed because “the company that was doing the acquisition didn’t understand the entertainment business.” Netflix, he said, is different: “We understand these assets that we’re buying, the things that are critical in Warner Bros. are key businesses that we operate in, and we understand.”

Investors aren’t fully convinced. Netflix shares fell 2.89% today.

The plot thickens

The deal is almost certain to trigger antitrust scrutiny. Three US senators cautioned that a Warner Bros. sale could be influenced by “political favoritism and corruption,” and argued that combining Netflix with HBO Max would create a streamer controlling more than 30% of the market, a level regarded as problematic under antitrust standards.

Netflix may also face a fight from Paramount Skydance, which has already questioned whether Warner Bros. Discovery ran a fair sale process. Paramount has pointed to reports that WBD’s management favored Netflix’s bid, even though they had submitted multiple offers, including an all-cash proposal. Paramount shares fell 9.82% today.

The Trump administration has also expressed “heavy skepticism” about the deal, a stance that could be amplified by Paramount CEO David Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, a close ally of Donald Trump.

Hollywood loves a sequel, and this saga is far from over.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• DigitalBridge popped 45.27% on reports that SoftBank is exploring a potential acquisition of the digital-infrastructure giant.
• Victoria’s Secret jumped 17.95% after reporting a 9% increase in third-quarter sales and lifting its full-year outlook, underscoring success in its beauty product segment.
• That strength in beauty showed up elsewhere too: Ulta Beauty jumped 12.65% after topping estimates and lifting its annual sales forecast.
• Cloud data management company Rubrik skyrocketed 22.42% following a strong Q3 report, putting the stock on track for one of its best days of trading ever.
• Southwest Airlines ticked 5.64% higher despite trimming its earnings forecast to account for a $200 million hit from the federal government shutdown, with the carrier noting demand remains robust heading into 2026.
• Praxis Precision Medicines soared 30.54% after its experimental epilepsy drug, relutrigine, delivered positive trial results.

What’s down

• Parsons fell 21.09% after the government chose another contractor for a major air-traffic control upgrade, undercutting investor expectations.
• SoFi Technologies slid 6.15% after announcing a $1.5 billion stock offering.
• Cloudflare dropped 1.57% following a Friday outage that briefly disrupted access to major platforms such as Coinbase–the company’s second outage in three weeks.
• Docusign dipped 7.64% despite posting strong earnings and raising its full-year sales outlook.
• Cybersecurity firm SentinelOne declined 14.44% after analysts highlighted a weak fourth-quarter revenue outlook in the company’s latest results.

Over the course of 1979 and 1980, the Hunt brothers cornered the silver market by slowly hoarding 100 million troy ounces of the commodity, or roughly one third of all the privately-held silver in the world at the time. By doing so, they were able to push the price of silver from $6.08 per ounce in January 1979 to $49.45 in January 1980, minting a fortune—before the US government stepped in and popped the bubble.

Silver may be flashy, but with prices regularly hitting new all-time highs, it would be tough to corner that market again. It’s far easier to target another hot commodity: Pokemon cards.

A savvy collector calling himself Kabuto King has made it his mission to collect every first edition Kabuto Pokemon card—a common and not particularly popular card, which is why the internet collectively laughed at him when he began stockpiling Kabutos in August.

Nobody’s laughing now. Kabuto King has accrued 1,783 Kabuto cards and counting, and the combination of lower supply in the public market and social media attention has boosted the price of a Kabuto card from $2.50 in early August to $37 today—a 1,380% increase.

Some internet trolls are trying to trip the King up, vowing to never sell him the Kabuto cards in their possession. Others have taken his side: someone recently created a $KABUTO crypto coin, whose transaction costs will be donated to Kabuto King so he can buy more cards.

Whether he decides to sell his cards for an enormous profit, or forever hoard them like a dragon coveting a weirdly specific treasure, we salute Kabuto King’s investing acumen and urge our readers to double check their Pokemon card collection for any Kabutos—they’re suddenly worth a pretty penny.—MR

Better late than never, right? After a five-week delay courtesy of the government shutdown, a solid stack of economic reports has landed in our laps…and the news looks pretty darn good.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index for September rose 0.3% from August and 2.8% from a year ago, with both numbers in line with expectations. Core prices—the Fed’s favorite inflation gauge since it excludes volatile food and energy—rose 0.2% month to month (as expected) and 2.8% year over year (slightly below forecasts).

Inflation, in other words, is chilling out.

Meanwhile, consumer spending inched up 0.3% in September following a downwardly revised 0.5% increase in August, according to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. Although in line with projections, this slowdown suggests that shoppers are balking at higher prices amid a shaky job market.

However, early December data paints a rosier picture. The University of Michigan found that consumer sentiment popped for the first time in five months to 53.3 from 51 in November, buoyed by a 13% rise in optimism over their personal finances. Blame it on Christmas bonuses or recent stock market gains, but Americans peering into their bank accounts like what they see.

Your move, Fed

These latest numbers suggest that all systems are a go for the Fed to cut rates next week…but what happens after that? Is this the start of an early Santa Claus Rally, or are we still hearing more noise than sleigh bells?

December is far from over, and there’s still a lot more coming down the pike. On December 16, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release its next jobs report shedding new light on the state of employment. Meanwhile, uncertainty swirls around Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s replacement, which is slated to be announced in early January. And on top of all that, the Supreme Court will be mulling President Trump’s use of emergency powers to pass sweeping tariffs—a decision with billions in tariff revenue at stake.

Bottom line: Today’s inflation data may be looking merry and bright, but don’t count on the market bringing you a gift until everything’s unwrapped.—JD

• Apple just hit an all-time high—and the AI crown may be within reach.
• Chinese chipmaker Moore Threads skyrocketed 425% in its trading debut, though its nearly $40 billion valuation still pales in comparison to Nvidia’s multitrillion-dollar scale.
• The New York Times has been busy: it filed a copyright lawsuit against Perplexity, accusing the AI startup of illegally using its content, a day after suing the Department of Defense over the Pentagon’s tightened limits on press access.
• SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is pitching “Trump Industrial Parks” to build US AI infrastructure with Japanese funding.
• Wall Street has been shaken by fears of a yen carry-trade blowup, but some strategists think the worries are overblown.
• Elon Musk’s X was fined $140 million for violating the EU’s content-moderation rules.
• CNBC has unveiled its new logo. It’s…pretty uninspired.

We’re heading into a pretty quiet week for economic reports, with just the NFIB small business optimism index and the delayed October JOLTS reading on Tuesday, the monthly US federal budget and the delayed Q3 employment cost index on Wednesday, and Thursday’s usual initial jobless claims report.

Clearly, everyone’s making room for the big kahuna: The FOMC, aka the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decider, will begin its two-day meeting on Tuesday and reveal its interest rate decision on Wednesday. Jerome Powell’s announcement will likely determine the direction of the market through the end of the year, and investors’ expectations of a rate cut remained steady around 87% following today’s PCE report—but if they’re wrong, expect some serious market mayhem.

As for earnings, reports are fewer and farther between as we get closer to the holidays:

Monday: Toll Brothers

Tuesday: Campbell’s Co., AutoZone, GameStop, AeroVironment, and Ollie’s Bargain Outlet

Wednesday: Oracle, Adobe, Synopsys, Chewy, and Vail Resorts

Thursday: Broadcom, Costco, Lululemon, and Manchester United