TheChek News Flow

The film club’s screenings have drawn in the likes of Alexander McQueen’s creative director Seán McGirr, English filmmaker Edgar Wright and actors Marisa Abela and Hugh Skinner.

LONDON — Club Ciné, the by-invitation-only film club founded by casting director Tom Macklin, is expanding its reach and is launching an editorial arm by turning its Instagram page @clubcine.ig into a magazine format filled with articles and interviews with actors, directors and costume designers.

The platform will also introduce a Substack newsletter in early December.

The film club’s screenings at The Cinema at Selfridges has drawn in a diverse crowd from fashion and entertainment, including Alexander McQueen’s creative director Seán McGirr; English filmmaker Edgar Wright; Dunhill’s creative director Simon Holloway; actors Marisa Abela and Hugh Skinner, and photographer Venetia Scott, who has never missed a screening.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - NOVEMBER 14: Carrie Mae Weems speaks onstage during Under the Oculus: A Celebration of Visionaries at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on November 14, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Sean Zanni/Getty Images for The Solomon R.

This year the film club has screened “High & Low — John Galliano,” “Anora,” “The Room Next Door,” “MaXXXine,” and more, usually followed by Q&As with directors such as Kevin MacDonald and Ti West.

The Instagram page will be a deeper dive into the lives of the creatives, with weekly posts.

The first is with film producer Malcolm Washington, who was behind Netflix’s “The Piano Lesson,” followed by Canadian artist and writer Bruce LaBruce and then actor Hari Nef, asking them about their film influences, obsessions and what they’re indulging in right now.

“I was always finding myself going to film festivals or first lit screenings at distributors, but I was always sitting there on my own watching these movies. The movies make you feel something, but you come out and there’s nobody to talk to about it because they’re under embargo and it took out the pleasure of going to the cinema,” said Macklin, who spent 15 years at Hearst booking talent for the covers of Harper’s Bazaar U.K., Esquire U.K. and Elle U.K.

Club Ciné is injecting the fun back into watching films for Macklin and his fellow industry colleagues.

The Cinema at Selfridges was designed by the famous Milanese interior design company Dimore Studio and has a David Lynch meets Wes Anderson interiors feel to it.

On arrivals there are Champagne and cocktails greeting guests and inside the screening rooms, each velvet seat is accompanied with popcorn and a goodie bag from Aesop or Haeckels, as well as a special pamphlet that contains trivia and tidbits from the film.

Before each screening Macklin speaks to the audience about interesting facts about the film being shown to put it in context and plays a quickfire quiz game about the director or actors in the film.

The film club has accidentally catapulted into something bigger than Macklin expected. “I never launched it as a business or to make profit,” he said.

Cutler & Gross was Club Ciné’s brand partner last season and Jimmy Choo is its current partner.

The idea for the film club started in 2018 for Macklin, where he would invite a small group of friends from Hearst to use the screening room at the W Hotel in Piccadilly Circus, which is a few minutes’ walk away from the publisher’s London offices. The film club took a break during COVID-19 and he decided to relaunch it after leaving his editorial job at Hearst.

In the relaunch, art directors Peter Ainsworth and Johanna Bonnevier helped him come up with a logo, which is a coat of arms that features a rooster, a lion and the helmet of a knight. Meanwhile, art director Tristan Bartolini has curated the visuals for the Instagram and Substack pages, with illustrator Richard Kilroy drawing the subjects.

On Nov. 22, Club Ciné will host a screening of “Paris Is Burning” with Aesop to launch the brand’s Gift Kits, which have been inspired by cinema.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Aesop’s senior art director Francesca Davoren-Britton and its global head of visual merchandising and brand environment Shawana Grosvenor.

The appetite for the film club is growing and in December, Club Ciné will host a screening for 80 people for Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer.”

The Withering Dream of a Cheap American Electric Car

‘That market sucks,’ Lucid Chief Executive Peter Rawlinson says, as Elon Musk pivots Tesla to driverless cars

Elon Musk has abandoned it. President-elect Donald Trump is unlikely to help. And the current economics of the U.S. auto industry don’t support it.

The key problem: America doesn’t really sell cheap new cars anymore.

Why would any automaker offer an EV—with all of that costly technology—at a price point that’s half of what the average new vehicle goes for these days?

“I think having a regular $25,000 model is pointless,” Musk said a few weeks ago. “It would be silly.”

Yes, the chief executive says Tesla TSLA 3.07%increase; green up pointing triangle is still working on a $25,000 robotaxi to arrive in 2026. But for those who don’t think his driverless cars are actually going to happen by then or for Luddites who just want to buy a new $25,000 EV with a steering wheel and pedals—no luck.

Musk isn’t alone in taking a sour view of making a cheap EV for the U.S.

“That market sucks,” Peter Rawlinson, chief executive of Lucid Motors, told me and my colleague Christopher Mims for our new podcast, called “Bold Names.”

Lucid LCID -3.37%decrease; red down pointing triangle which has begun taking orders for its coming $90,000 version of the new electric SUV called the Gravity, aims to bring out a more affordable midsize vehicle to compete against the Tesla Model Y in late 2026. That vehicle is said to cost less than $50,000, but a cheap EV is something Rawlinson said he would only support by licensing his technology to another company.

“That market is notorious because you get into mass manufacture—terrible, low margins,” he said of the low-price EVs. “To install the manufacturing base for millions of these units makes little sense to me.”

Abandoning the idea of a $25,000 car comes as a blow to those who were betting that the electrification of the automobile was on track to happen seemingly overnight—with EVs for every pocketbook replacing the tens of millions of vehicles on the roadways.

Instead, we’ve swung back to a belief that the transition, at least in the U.S., is going to be slower.

Musk upended the car industry almost two years ago with his incredible claims about Tesla’s ability to slash costs as it sought to develop a lower-priced EV while at the same time starting a price war by cutting the prices of the Model 3 sedan and Model Y sport-utility vehicle.

Rivals, lest they be left behind Tesla and its now-discarded claims, have aimed for cheap EVs of their own. But their broader efforts to electrify have been running into trouble. Ford Motor, for example, last month said it was pausing production of its electric F-150 Lightning, which starts at around $63,000, in the midst of slumping demand.

A slowdown in the rate of EV sales growth has complicated the picture. So has the growing anticipation that the new Trump administration will eliminate federal tax credits that have made EVs more affordable for buyers. The cheapest car Tesla currently sells in the U.S. starts at around $43,000—or $35,500 with a federal tax credit of $7,500.

Building and selling a cheap car for the U.S.—EV or not—was already difficult.

To start, profits can be thin. And that’s before adding expensive batteries to the equation, before inflation jacked prices up for everything, and before Chinese rivals got really, really good at making really, really inexpensive EVs of their own.

A lot of attention has focused on the fact that new cars, like everything these days, just cost way more than they used to.

The average transaction price for a new vehicle sold in the U.S. last month was $48,623, according to Kelley Blue Book, roughly $10,000 higher than in 2019, before the pandemic.

A decade ago, about 40% of the new-vehicle transactions in the U.S. were less than $25,000, including incentives and discounts, according to the researcher J.D. Power. This year, that figure is 9%.

In 2020, when Musk fanned the flames of excitement for a $25,000 car that he said was in the offing, the new-vehicle market in the U.S. was a much different thing. Even then, roughly a quarter of the new-vehicle transactions were for less than $25,000.

A year later, according to J.D. Power, it was 15%. It then fell to 6% before slightly rebounding this year as car companies offered deals to help move vehicles as higher interest rates made buying a car harder for some.

What happened? The pandemic. Prices shot up—first in the midst of supply shortages, and then they stayed high as automakers adjusted their lineup to cut out low-profit vehicles.

“As automakers were profit maximizing during the supply chain crisis era, you are going to prioritize the bigger vehicles, the more expensive vehicles with their higher margins,” Tyson Jominy, vice president of data and analytics at J.D. Power, told me. “Now we just don’t have” these cheaper models.

Today, just four models account for more than two-thirds of all vehicles with suggested retail prices of less than $25,000 in the U.S.—Toyota’s Corolla, Kia’s Forte, Nissan’s Sentra and Chevrolet’s Trax.

It isn’t as though people don’t want cheap cars. Now, many are just left buying used cars.

What has Western automotive executives’ stomachs churning is that they might have inadvertently left a huge opening for Chinese rivals who have shown an ability to build inexpensive EVs that consumers outside the U.S. are gobbling up.

While Trump has promised even heftier tariffs to effectively keep Chinese imports out, the president-elect has suggested he might be open to Chinese automakers’ setting up factories in the U.S.—though such a move would mean their labor costs would surely increase compared with what they’re accustomed to back home.

Even for Musk, though, the world seems to be shifting quickly. He has said Tesla sales could rise as much as 30% next year by offering cheaper versions of existing models.

“The amount of work required to make a lower-cost car is insanely high,” Musk told analysts in October. “It is harder to get like 20% of the cost out of a car than it is to design the car and build the entire factory in the first place—it’s like excruciating.”

He added: “There’s not a lot of movies made about the heroes who got 20% of the cost out of a car, but let me tell you, there should be.”

Albemarle’s Kent Masters says economics do not support pivot away from Asia on commodities in EV supply chains

Albemarle, the world’s largest lithium producer, says it is not economically viable to build a supply chain in North America and Europe that could wrest control of critical minerals from China.

Kent Masters, chief executive of the US-based group, told the Financial Times that the “returns are not there” to pivot supply of the commodity, which is crucial for the electric vehicle industry, to the west because of low lithium prices and high operating costs.

“We were trying to pivot to the west . . . the prices we see in the market don’t really allow us to do that,” Masters told the Financial Times, adding that the US was “absolutely” at risk of losing the race to compete with China on lithium.

Prices for lithium have fallen more than 80 per cent since the start of last year, as a global slowdown in electric vehicle sales and a tough macroeconomic backdrop muted demand for the metal while supply continued to grow.

“At the current price level, new entrants are not being incentivised to enter the market,” said Adam Megginson, a senior analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

The downturn in the lithium market undermines western efforts to build a domestic supply chain for metals crucial for the energy transition and reduce reliance on China, home to the majority of the world’s refining capacity and some of the largest mining companies.

Albemarle reported a quarterly loss of $1.1bn earlier this month on low lithium prices and reduced its workforce by 6-7 per cent as part of its cost savings plan. Earlier this year, the company paused its plans to build a $1.3bn refinery in South Carolina and partially halted its expansion in Kemerton, Australia.

The company owns the only operating lithium mine in the US in Nevada and is securing permits for a mine in North Carolina. Masters told the FT that the development of that mine depends on “what the economics look like at the time”.

“Once we get through permitting, we’ll have to make a decision whether we do it,” Masters said. The company plans to spend $800mn-$900mn in capital expenditures globally next year, about half of this year’s spending.

The slowdown from Albemarle comes as producers report lower profits and pull back on expansion plans. In August, Piedmont Lithium scrapped its plans to build an $800mn refinery in Tennessee. In September, International Battery Metals suspended operations at its lithium plant in Utah two months after it started production.

“The gap from China seems to be widening rather than getting closer,” said Oliver Montique, a trade and supply chains analyst at Eurasia Group.

China made up 65 per cent of the world’s refining capacity of lithium last year and is expected to generate more than half of the world’s supplies through 2040, according to the International Energy Agency.

Some companies are moving forward. Last month, Rio Tinto acquired Arcadium Lithium for $6.7bn, the largest lithium acquisition on record. Global mining supply is expected to grow about 24 per cent this year and 21 per cent next year, according to Macquarie, which does not expect prices to recover until 2027.

While the US Inflation Reduction Act included tax credits to encourage the sourcing of non-Chinese sourced materials and domestic production, Albemarle says the law has not accelerated the buildout of a supply chain down to the minerals sector.

Rich Nolan, president of the National Mining Association, called for a “more aggressive and holistic approach” to boost domestic production, including “stockpiles, offtake backstops, [and] advance market commitments.”

In addition to low prices, lithium producers face long permitting timelines, workforce shortages, and policy uncertainty. Promises from incoming president Donald Trump to “end the insane electric vehicle mandate” in the US and undo the IRA could slow EV adoption even further and drive down lithium prices, say analysts.

“Anything that changes or decreases the demand is not going to be good,” said Alice Fox, senior base metals strategist at Macquarie Group.

Apple just finished releasing the initial M4 Mac lineup, with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max going into the iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro. While those are likely the last announcements for the year, there’s still a lot in the pipeline for next spring. Here’s everything to look forward to.

Perhaps the biggest announcement for next spring will be Apple’s most affordable new iPhone: the iPhone SE. This is expected to be the biggest upgrade to the iPhone SE since it debuted in 2016, bringing it up to date with the modern iPhone lineup.

It’s expected to finally be dropping the home button, with a new form factor similar to the iPhone 14. iPhone SE 4 will also be Apple’s first iPhone to integrate an in-house modem, transitioning away from Qualcomm. It’ll also adopt the USB-C connector.

Apple’s cheapest iPad is likely going to get its first update in over 2 years next spring, with the main focus being Apple Intelligence support. The last iPad refresh brought the first redesign to the base iPad since Apple started making budget iPads, so there likely won’t be any design changes.

If it does support Apple Intelligence, it’ll likely be with an A18 chip, although we don’t know for certain. Learn more about Apple’s cheapest iPad in our dedicated guide.

Although this is going to be a smaller refresh (especially now that Apple added 16GB of RAM to the existing M2 and M3 MacBook Air models), Apple will still be adopting the new M4 chip in the MacBook Air next spring.

We don’t expect any changes outside of the chip upgrade, though it would be cool to get the new Center Stage camera that the latest MacBook Pros have.

This is also going to be a small refresh, but the iPad Air will likely get an update next spring, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. It’ll likely be equipped with an M3 chip, as well as an all new Magic Keyboard just for iPad Air.

Apple’s first smart home product with a display is also on track for a spring release, marking Apple’s first HomePod (of sorts) to support Apple Intelligence. It’s expected to be a cheaper display that’s both wall mountable and attachable to speakers. It’ll have a roughly 6-inch square display.

SpaceX will conduct the sixth flight test of Starship, the largest rocket ever built, as soon as November 18, following the smooth success of the previous mission less than a month ago.

The high flight cadence is thanks, in part, to that success, which included the first-ever return of the Super Heavy booster to the launch site — where massive “chopstick” arms jutting from the launch tower caught it in mid-air — and a controlled, on-target splashdown after suborbital flight of the Starship upper stage in the Indian Ocean. This sixth test includes many of the same objectives; this fact led the Federal Aviation Administration to approve both flight 5 and 6 at the same time last month. Up until this point, SpaceX has needed to wait (sometimes months) for regulatory approval before each Starship launch.

In a post on its website, SpaceX says it will attempt to re-create these same successes on November 18, including catching the booster at the launch site and an accurate Starship splashdown. The company will also continue to test the heat shield and maneuvers for the upper-stage reentry, “to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online.” Engineers also introduced a number of upgrades to the system, including more redundancy in the booster propulsion system, updated software controls, and other changes.

SpaceX will also attempt to relight one of the Ship’s six Raptor engines on orbit, a key capability to eventually also reuse the Starship upper stage. Engineers will put this stage through its paces in other ways as well: The company will test new secondary thermal protection materials. In addition, as the company put it, “The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles.”

All this testing will culminate in “significant upgrades” to the ship, starting with flight 7, like redesigned flaps, larger propellant tanks, and the most up-to-date thermal protection.

A live webcast of the test will start around 30 minutes before the 30-minute launch window at 2 p.m. PT, which will be viewable on X or SpaceX’s website. This late-afternoon launch window (which opens at 4 p.m. local Texas time) will enable better viewing conditions upon reentry, SpaceX said.

SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket has the potential to transform the commercial space economy, ensure America’s position as the global leaders in the space race, and put humans on Mars for the first time. But first it has to get to orbit.

This is becoming much more likely as the Starship test program accelerates and the company demonstrates more and more of the rocket’s powerful capabilities. Yet to many, Starship is still essentially a vanity project from the world’s richest man. This article will attempt to explain the origins of the rocket and where it might be headed.

Standing at nearly 400 feet tall, Starship is the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. For comparison, the company’s much-used Falcon 9 is 229 feet tall, and the Saturn V that brought Apollo missions to the moon was 363 feet tall.

Starship also represents the reason for SpaceX’s existence: to spread “the light of consciousness,” as Musk puts it, through the solar system, starting with the moon and Mars.

The rocket is composed of two stages: the Super Heavy booster and the second stage, which is also called Starship. At liftoff, the Super Heavy generates an incredible 16.7 million pounds of thrust using its 33 Raptor engines. That’s the amount of power needed to carry upward of 100-150 tons of cargo and crew to low Earth orbit — again, equivalent to the Saturn V but considerably more advanced in several ways.

The biggest change is that Starship is designed to be fully reusable, meaning that eventually both stages would return to the launch site to be rapidly refurbished and reused for the next mission. This would be a first in the history of rocketry. While SpaceX pioneered booster reuse with the Falcon 9 rocket, the upper stage is still left in orbit, to burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

Reusability, combined with the incredible payload capacity, could drive Starship costs (for SpaceX itself) down to as low as $2 million to $3 million per launch, Musk has claimed. While we don’t have a firm sense of what it costs the company to launch each Falcon 9, because SpaceX’s financials are confidential, they are priced at $69.75 million for the customer.

Interplanetary travel has been embedded in the DNA of SpaceX practically since its inception. Elon Musk has talked about developing a heavy-lift rocket capable of carrying many tons of mass to low Earth orbit, the moon, and even farther for two decades. As early as 2005, Musk was publicly discussing his plans to build a rocket with a payload capacity of 100 tons to send to low Earth orbit.

The rocket now known as Starship has gone under a few different names: the “BFR” and “BFS” (Big F—ing Rocket/Ship or Big Falcon Rocket/Ship, depending on who you ask); the Mars Colonial Transporter; and the Interplanetary Transport System. In July 2019, the small second-stage prototype called “Starhopper” completed a small hop for the first time; that was followed by the first large-scale demonstrator, called SN15, which completed a high-altitude test flight for the first time in May 2021.

Of course, it hasn’t all been rosy: The company has also exploded a fair few prototypes along the way, and its first and second integrated flight tests in April 2023 and November 2023 ended in fiery midair explosions.

The Starship program has accelerated in recent years thanks to two main changes: the launch and operation of Starlink, SpaceX’s internet satellite constellation, which provides critical revenue to fuel Starship development, and a $4 billion Human Landing System (HLS) award from NASA to develop a version of Starship to land humans on the moon for the Artemis program. Which leads us to the next question …

Starship is often understood as one billionaire’s pet project, but that is a deep misreading of the purpose of Starship or the role it could play in the future of the space economy.

Regardless of when Starship might enter commercial operations, pretty much every industry expert agrees that it has the potential to fundamentally transform the space economy. As mentioned above, no other launch vehicle has ever been fully reusable, and those that are partially reusable don’t come close to the rocket’s mammoth size and power.

What does that mean? Well, with the ability to launch cargo in bulk essentially solved, one can begin to imagine many incredible and heretofore unthinkable possibilities — provided the rest of the industry can keep up.

Starship isn’t just a linchpin of growth for the commercial space industry. NASA also pinned the hopes of its Artemis program on the massive launch vehicle when it awarded SpaceX the HLS award in 2021, to deliver the crewed Starship capable of landing astronauts on the moon for the Artemis III mission. That award essentially transformed Starship from one company’s ambition into a major part of ensuring America’s continued supremacy in space.

The sixth flight test is currently scheduled for no earlier than November 18. We break down the main flight objectives of the test here. The company will be attempting to re-create the successes of the previous test flight — including catching the Super Heavy booster using “chopstick” arms jutting out from the launch tower — as well as testing upgrades to hardware and software.

According to Musk’s most recent estimate — which it must be said, his estimates have not historically been particularly reliable — Starship will launch to Mars in 2026. That’s the soonest opportunity for an expedient mission according to the position of the two planets’ orbits around the sun. Whether SpaceX will have the rocket ready in time for such a long mission is unclear, chiefly because there are still some major technical challenges to de-risk, like on-orbit refueling.

That’s right: To reach Mars, or even the moon, for that matter, Starship would need to refuel using a Starship tanker that’s hanging out in orbit. That Starship would transfer propellant to the main vehicle before it could continue its journey. Refueling would need to take place a number of times — for Artemis III, SpaceX estimates needing to launch around 10 refueling tankers to orbit prior to that mission.

The Starship that will go to Mars will not look exactly like the ones flying today, Musk told SpaceX employees in April: The interplanetary Starship will likely be as tall as 500 feet, with even more room for crew and cargo.

Danish company expects data to show that CagriSema cuts weight by 25 per cent in just over a year

Novo Nordisk is preparing to unveil data for a “next generation” weight-loss drug it believes could lead the field of GLP-1 treatments, as drugmakers seek to better the results of blockbuster treatments Wegovy and Mounjaro.

The company expects late-stage data for CagriSema, due to be published next month, to show that the drug cuts weight by 25 per cent in just over a year. That compares with up to 16 per cent from Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, and up to 22.5 per cent from Eli Lilly’s rival Mounjaro when administered alongside lifestyle interventions such as improved diet, exercise and sleep.

“CagriSema is really important for us. It’s a next-generation product and it has the potential to be best in class,” chief executive Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen told the Financial Times at the release this month of the company’s third-quarter results, adding that he had not yet seen final data for the compound.

The headline trial results will be closely monitored by pharmaceutical industry experts. Shares in Novo Nordisk, which remains Europe’s largest company by market capitalisation, have struggled to keep pace with those of its chief rival in the weight-loss sector, Eli Lilly.

Investor faith in Novo Nordisk’s ability to meet demand for its products has taken a hit, while the company also suffered a setback from disappointing results for an experimental weight loss pill in September.

Pointing to the removal of Wegovy from US shortage lists last week, Jørgensen said the company could meet demand and that share price movements showed “there’s a lot of hype around obesity and maybe misunderstandings about the underlying business position”.

Data on weight-loss drugs has shaken share prices in the pharmaceutical sector, with excitement around the medications dominating assessments of the industry’s prospects in recent years.

Roche shares surged in July when it unveiled early data for its weight-loss pill, only to slide in September on the back of concerns over side-effects.

Should CagriSema fail to deliver on its potential, investors may start to reconsider Novo Nordisk’s ability to lead the weight-loss field, according to Emily Field, an analyst at Barclays.

“This is the most important data point for pharma of the entire year,” she said. “Either Novo has a path into the next decade or they don’t.”

CagriSema combines semaglutide, the active ingredient in the company’s Ozempic and Wegovy that mimics the gut hormone GLP-1, with cagrilintide, a compound based on the pancreatic hormone amylin, in a once-weekly injection.

While Novo Nordisk is not expected to publish detailed data next month, the CagriSema results will be the most advanced for an amylin drug.

This will have wider significance for the field, as other drugmakers develop amylin-based treatments that, like GLP-1, reduce food intake and help the body control blood glucose levels.

Success for CagriSema could boost confidence in companies such as the Danish organisation Zealand Pharma, which is developing a drug based solely on amylin, said Michael Novod, an analyst at Nordea. Its market capitalisation has doubled this year as excitement about the drug class continues to build.

CagriSema is also being tested to treat type-2 diabetes and in a head-to-head trial with Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro, as Novo Nordisk has embarked on record research and development spending to stay ahead of rivals.

A range of approved weight-loss drugs could provide physicians with different options to prescribe to patients who need greater weight loss or who struggle with side-effects. “It’s not going to be a one size fits all,” said Novod.

He added that the data ranked as similarly important to advanced data for Ozempic, Mounjaro and Novo Nordisk’s Select trial that proved the benefits of GLP-1 drugs for treating conditions such as heart disease. “It’s a pivotal moment for the company’s ability to innovate and set a new target for other drugs,” he said.

They have flocked to stock funds at a pace rarely seen since 2008, but some warn that shares look expensive historically

A roaring market rally since the U.S. presidential election has driven up the price of everything from shares of technology and manufacturing giants to cryptocurrencies. Many investors are betting it has room to run.

Investors have stampeded into funds tracking U.S. stocks and picked up trades that would profit if the rally that recently sent the S&P 500 above 6000 for the first time reaches new heights.

U.S. equity exchange-traded and mutual funds drew nearly $56 billion in the week ended Wednesday, the second-largest weekly haul in records going back to 2008, according to EPFR data. Such funds have drawn inflows for seven consecutive months, the longest streak since 2021, when a dizzying market melt-up sent stocks to repeated records.

Driving the optimism? Many investors said they expect lower taxes and fewer regulations during Donald Trump’s second term as president.

Dominic Rizzo, a technology portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price, said tariffs could boost U.S. manufacturing, driving a surge in domestic spending and investment. Other investors are simply breathing a sigh of relief that the election has passed.

The share of investors surveyed by the American Association of Individual Investors who said they were bullish jumped to 49.8% this past week, while the share of those reporting a neutral sentiment dropped to the lowest level since 2022. About 40% of those surveyed said the U.S. election made them more optimistic about the market.

“Animal spirits are alive and well right now,” Rizzo said.

Rizzo oversees shares of Nvidia and other tech giants. After a big run-up, he is still optimistic about the group ahead of Nvidia’s earnings report Wednesday. Investors are also fixated on the presidential transition and how it might shape the market’s winners and losers.

Some market watchers caution that investors might be too quick to latch on to policies that could boost markets, while ignoring plans that might stir inflation and market volatility.

Stocks wobbled at the end of the past week, and bitcoin retreated. Trump’s appointment of the vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health and human services secretary pressured several stocks including Moderna and Pfizer. Shares of Tesla, which soared after the election and pushed the company’s market cap back above $1 trillion, have stumbled in recent sessions. Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group fell 12% for the week.

Still, the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq Composite closed Friday within about 3.2% of their respective record highs. With just weeks left in 2024, the S&P 500 is on track to jump more than 20% for the year, the second consecutive year of gains of that magnitude. It is a back-to-back advance that has been seen only three times over the past century, according to Deutsche Bank.

Joe Johnson, 37, said he has waded into hot stocks including Nvidia, Tesla and a crypto play, MicroStrategy. His portfolio has swelled this year, and he is feeling so good about the market that he is thinking about pouring his cash pile into stocks. He is eyeing such industrial giants as Caterpillar and Deere, which he believes will benefit from a strong economy.

“I am bullish on the market,” Johnson said. “The euphoria everyone is feeling is warranted.”

Johnson said he is excited about Trump’s presidency and expects his policies to benefit his small business in Maryland, which sells boat-maintenance kits, engine parts and protective covers.

Many investors have piled into segments of the market such as small companies, which are especially sensitive to the economy.

The Russell 2000 has risen almost 2% since the election, and one of the largest exchange-traded funds tied to the index attracted $3.9 billion in inflows in a single session this month, the most since June 2007. Money managers, meanwhile, have increased positions that would pay out if the rally continued, driving net bullish bets in the futures market to the highest level in more than four years.

Some of the riskiest corners of financial markets are thriving too. Three of the top five days for trading in call options, trades that give the right to buy shares, have occurred this month, according to options records going back to 1973. That has pushed up the cost of bullish trades that would profit if stocks soared.

A frenzy of trading in cryptocurrencies sent bitcoin prices above $90,000 and unleashed a historic rush into crypto funds. Dogecoin, a speculative coin backed by nothing, shot up after Trump revealed plans to create a government-efficiency department called DOGE, to be co-led by Elon Musk, a dogecoin evangelist. Its $55 billion market cap now tops that of Ford Motor.

Trading in the over-the-counter market, which includes riskier securities such as penny stocks, has surged 27% in November from the same time last year, according to OTC Markets Group.

Some said stocks are looking expensive after their recent run. The S&P 500 recently traded at 22 times its expected earnings over the next 12 months, above its five-year average of roughly 20. A Bank of America strategist, Savita Subramanian, called market sentiment and positioning “dangerously bullish” in a note to clients Friday.

Bond investors have been sending a different signal, driving the benchmark 10-year Treasury yield to 4.426% on Friday, up from 4.072% around a month ago. They are banking on bigger deficits and higher inflation in the years ahead. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated Thursday that the central bank will take its time to trim interest rates, pressuring bonds and stocks.

One measure closely tracked by investors, the equity risk premium—or the gap between the S&P 500’s earnings yield and that of 10-year Treasurys—shrank close to zero, the lowest level since 2002, according to Dow Jones Market Data. That means the reward for owning stocks over bonds is dwindling.

“The market is awfully expensive to have a melt-up,” said Rob Arnott, the founder and chairman of Research Affiliates.

Deal gives company access to NBA content and rights in parts of Northern Europe and Latin America; Turner to license ‘Inside the NBA’ to ESPN

Warner Bros. Discovery WBD -6.49%decrease; red down pointing triangle has settled its breach of contract lawsuit against the National Basketball Association, an agreement that will keep the company in business with the league for at least the next decade, people familiar with the matter said.

The accord gives Warner Bros. Discovery the ability to develop new shows with NBA content in the U.S. and abroad, and international NBA rights in parts of Northern Europe and Latin America excluding Mexico and Brazil.

The deal is expected to be announced early next week.

While Warner Bros. Discovery is losing rights to regular and postseason games for its TNT network after this season, the settlement will give it rights to a significant amount of NBA content domestically and abroad, the people said, and the league will avoid a continued legal battle in court.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s efforts to retain some NBA content even after losing its grip on a long-held rights package underscores how valuable live sporting events are and the lengths media companies will go to keep a piece of the action for their cable and streaming customers.

The company sued the NBA in July after the league signed new rights deals with Disney’s ESPN, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Amazon.com valued at nearly $80 billion over 11 years. Warner Bros. Discovery alleged that the league violated a matching-rights clause with its TNT cable network by making a deal to put games on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Legal discovery had begun in that case.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s digital platforms, Bleacher Report and House of Highlights, will continue to have access to NBA content. House of Highlights, which focuses on big moments in games, often in near real time, is seen as a potential global growth property for Warner Bros. Discovery, similar to the NFL’s RedZone channel, which shows live action from games.

The company will continue to partner on the NBA’s digital operations for the next several years. That portion of the deal will provide Warner Bros. Discovery with about $350 million in revenue over the length of the agreement, for services, promotion, programming and marketing, people familiar with the terms said.

The new rights deals go into effect next year and would end TNT’s more than three decades as a home for NBA games. Warner Bros. Discovery’s settlement runs 11 years, which is the same term as the league’s rights deals with Disney, Amazon and NBCUniversal.

Separately, Warner Bros. Discovery struck a deal with Disney to license the TNT show “Inside the NBA” to ESPN and ABC starting next season, according to the people familiar with the matter. The show, which features the former players Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal, has an enthusiastic and large following. The show will air throughout the course of the season.

In addition, these people said, ESPN will sublicense Big 12 conference college football and basketball games to Warner Bros. Discovery that it can air on TNT, as well as on its Max streaming service.

That agreement follows a similar five-year deal the two struck in March to share College Football Playoff games, starting with the current season.

The addition of college football, and a new deal for Nascar, are part of the company’s efforts to fill the void that will be left by the departure of the NBA.

Warner Bros. Discovery has major distribution deals coming up and is fighting hard to keep the fees it gets for TNT on par with their current monthly value of around $3 a subscriber. In September, Warner Bros. Discovery signed a new distribution agreement with Charter Communications, the largest pay-TV distributor in the U.S. that kept the TNT price at its current rate, The Wall Street Journal reported.