TheChek News Flow

France and Germany clash over ‘buy EU’ weapons

Berlin says new €150bn funding for defence industry should be open to non-EU partners, but Paris disagrees

A proposed €150bn injection into the EU’s defence industry has become a new flashpoint in a long-standing battle between France and Germany over the continent’s rearmament drive and whether it should include countries outside the bloc.

Spooked by US President Donald Trump’s threats to end generations of American protection, Europe has pledged to increase defence spending dramatically and scale up their domestic capabilities that have withered since the cold war.

Last week the European Commission proposed to raise €150bn that would be lent to capitals to boost their military production. While the broad idea has received unanimous political backing, the details are still being fleshed out, with heavy lobbying over whether the cash could be spent on arms made outside the bloc.

During an EU summit on Thursday, several leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the initiative should be open to like-minded non-EU partners. “It is very important to us that the projects that can be supported with this are open to . . . countries that are not part of the European Union but work closely together, such as Great Britain, Norway, Switzerland or Turkey,” Scholz said.

However French President Emmanuel Macron, who has long supported increasing European autonomy and boosting domestic industrial production, said that “spending should not be for new off-the-shelf kit that is once again non-European”.

For the gaps in Europe’s critical capabilities — including air defence, long-range strikes, intelligence, reconnaissance and targeting — “the method is to identify the best businessmen and businesses we have”, he added.

He also said each EU member state would be asked to “re-examine orders to see if European orders could be prioritised”.

Brussels diplomats are concerned that the €150bn initiative will get derailed by the same argument that has delayed agreement for more than a year on the European Defence Industry Programme, a €1.5bn fund disbursing grants for defence. Efforts to implement it ground to a halt this winter after Paris demanded a cap on what proportion could be spent on extra-EU components and a ban on products with IP protection from third countries.

Senior commission officials tasked with drafting the detailed proposal in the next 10 days have been urged to liaise closely with Paris, Berlin and other capitals to make sure it is not blocked when put forward for approval by member states. 

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on this. It didn’t exist a week ago and needs to be ready in less than two weeks,” said an EU official. “There will be compromises made.”

Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said the loans, which will target seven key capabilities including air and missile defence, artillery and drones, will “help member states to pool demand and to buy together,” and also to provide “immediate military equipment for Ukraine”.

The Polish government, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU and is tasked with chairing the bloc’s ministerial meetings, will be under pressure to work out a rapid agreement. The initiative can be approved by a majority of the EU’s 27 states, but French buy-in is seen as essential even if the country can be outvoted — as the EDIF precedent shows.

“We’re at a stage where this just needs to be sorted in the name of speed, not perfection,” said an EU diplomat involved in the negotiations. “But if there was reluctance to ram €1.5bn past French objections, how are we expected to do €150bn?”

The commission declined to comment.

Can Germany spend its way out of industrial decline?

Chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz wants to expand investment in defence and infrastructure. The race to re-arm could be a much-needed boost for manufacturing

It took just a few hours for Friedrich Merz to conduct one of the sharpest U-turns in recent political history.

At lunchtime last Friday, Germany’s chancellor-to-be received a sobering briefing on the state of the economy from finance minister Jörg Kukies.

Kukies explained that after two years of stagnation and with more clouds gathering over Europe’s largest economy, Berlin faced a €130bn budget shortfall over four years and dwindling growth potential, according to people with knowledge of the presentation.

Shortly afterwards, Donald Trump had a public shouting match in the Oval Office with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing the Ukrainian leader of not wanting peace with Russia, Kyiv’s aggressor, and not being grateful for Washington’s support. For Washington’s allies in Europe, the extraordinary scenes were further evidence that the Trump administration had turned hostile.

Watching all this unfold, Merz decided “there was no time to lose”, says a person close to his thinking.

Within days, the centre-right leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) struck a deal with the Social Democratic party (SPD), his likely coalition partner in the next government, which would transform the way Germany manages its economy.

The two parties agreed to loosen the country’s constitutional debt brake and inject hundreds of billions into Germany’s military and ageing infrastructure — a breakthrough upending more than two decades of conservative fiscal dogma.

Under the agreement, which still has to be approved by parliament with a two-thirds majority, Berlin would be able to raise as much debt as needed to equip the Bundeswehr. In return for its support on defence, the SPD secured the creation of a €500bn, 10-year infrastructure fund to modernise the country’s roads, bridges, energy and communications networks — one of the party’s flagship campaign pledges.

It was time to adopt a “whatever it takes” approach to defence in light of the “threats to freedom and peace” in Europe, Merz said on Tuesday when he announced the deal alongside the leaders of his Bavarian sister party CSU and the SPD.

Not only does the agreement represent a stark departure from the brand of economic orthodoxy that has been dominant in Germany, it also accelerates a move away from decades of military restraint after the second world war.

“It is a huge shift away from this stance of ‘You make do with the money you’ve got, rather than borrow’ that has been the pillar of the modern German economy, and has been something Germans have really prided themselves in,” says historian Katja Hoyer.

“It signals that Germany is going to play a bigger role on the world stage, but also that Germany will look more after its own interests.”

The prospect of huge investments into the defence sector has also fuelled hopes Germany could halt its industrial and technological decline by helping manufacturers and engineers find a new purpose and new markets — with positive effects rippling through the Eurozone.

This is “one of the most important shifts in German economic policy” since the second world war, says Vikram Aggarwal, investment manager at Jupiter Fund Management, as Germany adapts to a “multipolar word” where countries and regions “will have to increasingly provide for their own defence”.

According to Joe Kaeser, former chief of German engineering giant Siemens, now chair of Siemens Energy and Daimler Truck: “It means we are going to be back, Germany — we don’t know exactly how, but this is what we are going to achieve.”

With potentially more than €1tn in additional debt over the next decade, economists have compared the fiscal stimulus to the country’s reunification in 1990, when the government led by CDU chancellor Helmut Kohl poured billions into the former eastern communist states.

The effects on Germany’s industry should be significant, economists, policymakers and business executives believe, as defence contractors help replace part of the shrinking automotive base and infrastructure projects jolt the construction sector back into life.

“One should not underestimate what confidence does on decision-making for investment and employment,” says Kaeser. “This [deal] is a priceless effort to set out a mission — to say this is what we’re going to do: this landing on the moon.”

BNP says that the announcement can deliver “a positive confidence shock”, galvanising consumers and companies. The German economy — stuck in a rut for the past two years — could expand 0.7 per cent as soon as 2025, compared to 0.2 per cent growth in a previous scenario, the bank estimates.

Economists predict the debt-to-GDP ratio, currently at 63 per cent, will still be far lower than that of France or Italy. While German stocks soared, the country’s borrowing costs, traditionally the lowest in the Eurozone, jumped by the most since the 1990s, as investors adjusted to Berlin’s newfound boldness.

The new package would accelerate industrial shifts already under way since outgoing chancellor Olaf Scholz set up a special €100bn military fund in 2022, in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, he described the move as Zeitenwende — historic turning point — in his nation’s approach to defence and security. Germany is the second largest supplier of arms to Ukraine behind the US.

The race to re-arm could be a much-needed boost for German manufacturing, which has been hit by the crisis in carmaking, looming trade wars, and growing competition from cheap Chinese steel and car imports.

German weapons maker Rheinmetall, whose stock has nearly doubled this year, is converting some of its own domestic car-part plants to produce military equipment. Last month Franco-German tank maker KNDS agreed to take over and convert a train-making factory from Alstom in the eastern town of Görlitz to produce parts for battle tanks and other military vehicles.

Hensoldt, a state-owned maker of sensors and radars, is in talks to hire teams of software engineers from Continental and Bosch, two of Germany’s largest automotive suppliers, which together have announced over 10,000 job cuts in the past year.

Excitement spread among Deutsche Bahn staff this week, at the thought that the state-owned railway known for its delayed trains and signalling failures would receive the money to implement a €53bn renovation plan stuck in limbo since the collapse of Scholz’s coalition in November.

Boris Pistorius, SPD defence minister, has been one of the most vocal advocates for debt brake reform. German’s most popular politician, who hopes to remain in his post under a Merz-led coalition, described this week’s announcement as “a truly far-reaching, historic decision”, saying: “We are taking responsibility for our security not only as Germany, but also for our Nato partners.”

That Merz, of all German politicians, would orchestrate such a dramatic policy shift, has startled many in Germany. A staunch Atlanticist in the tradition of postwar chancellor Konrad Adenauer, the 69-year-old former BlackRock senior adviser has built a reputation as a supply-side conservative sceptical of state intervention.

During the campaign, he vowed to cut taxes, regulation and welfare benefits. While he did not rule out a reform of the borrowing limits, he insisted that budget priorities first be set and cuts decided.

“It’s a typical ‘Nixon-goes-to-China’ moment,” says a person close to the negotiations.

“You don’t choose the historic moments in which you live,” says Sophia Besch, senior fellow in the Europe Program at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Merz, as a transatlantacist, would not have chosen to be the chancellor overseeing the divorce with the US.”

Merz has no choice but to act quickly, his allies argue. His only chance of securing a supermajority to pass the constitutional amendments is to use the outgoing parliament, which can be reconvened until March 25.

Beyond that date, the far-right Alternative for Germany and far-left Die Linke, which oppose reforming the debt brake to fund more defence spending, will enjoy a blocking minority. Merz still needs to win over the Greens to pass the bills.

“Merz is totally convinced that we need money for defence. We don’t know how much, but we know that after March 25, a minority of Putin-friendly parties can stop any kind of additional defence money for the foreseeable future,” says Roland Koch, a veteran CDU politician and close ally of Merz. “Only the Social Democrats and the Greens can be allies, and you have to pay a price — the €500bn fund for infrastructure is the price.”

Merz succeeded in sealing a defence pact with the SPD before a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday. As chancellor-in-waiting he could not officially attend the gathering, which was designed to co-ordinate the bloc’s response to Trump’s efforts to negotiate a settlement with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine — Scholz is still Germany’s caretaker chancellor.

But Merz managed to steal the show, flying to the Belgian capital the day before to meet Nato chief Mark Rutte, EU diplomatic head Kaja Kallas and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

On Thursday in Brussels, when asked about his government talks with the SPD on the sidelines of a meeting of Europe’s centre-right leaders, he quipped: “We are on good speaking terms . . . when it comes to spending money!”

Back home however, Merz is facing two weeks of tricky legislative hurdles and institutional obstacles.

“A lot of people are very sceptical,” says a senior Bundeswehr commander, who warned of sluggish procurement and vast manpower deficiencies. Addressing those problems, he said, was “not going to take months, it’s going to take years”.

Merz’s package includes a plan to overhaul defence procurement. But Christian Mölling, Europe director at the Bertelsmann Foundation, a think-tank, says that trying to enact structural reforms while also spending much larger sums of money would be like performing open heart surgery. “While it is pumping you’re also trying to change something — and that’s an enormous stress.”

The same logic applies to infrastructure projects, says Jens Südekum, a professor of economics at Düsseldorf’s Heinrich Heine University. Not only must policymakers allocate the money wisely to maximise impact on growth, they also needed to speed up implementation.

There could be more immediate political snags. The Greens, furious at Merz’s sudden conversion after years of opposing their calls for debt brake reform, have decided to make him sweat, heralding hard bargaining until the old Bundestag is reconvened next week.

But most analysts expect the Greens to support the package in return for assurances that part of the money will go towards the green transition.

Another difficulty for the CDU/CSU and the SPD will be to re-mobilise all their outgoing MPs, who may have little incentive to abide by party discipline when it comes to attendance or voting.

Hoyer believes that the increasing pressure — external from Trump, internal with a resurgent far right and far left — is likely to unite Germany’s mainstream parties.

“This grand coalition that isn’t so grand any more is keen to prove that this is a new start,” she says. “Domestically, they’re quite aware that they’ve only got four years. And if they don’t do anything, then the AfD and Die Linke will probably increase [their support] further.”

The huge bets on what is known as the cash-futures basis trade could amplify market shocks

It is hard to underestimate the enduring resonance of the 1980s comedy Trading Places in the finance world. The story of the Duke brothers seeking to profit in orange juice futures from ill-gotten inside information was even referenced in a recent speech by Beth Hammack, president of the Cleveland Federal Reserve

She was warning about an issue that is increasingly worrying global policymakers — the amount being borrowed by hedge funds to inflate their trading positions relative to their assets, or leverage. In Trading Places, the Duke brothers came unstuck and went out of business, partly because they were too leveraged in what they thought was a riskless trade and could not meet calls to pay more margin, or collateral, when it turned sour.

In the Dukes’ case, there was not a lot of obvious systemic fallout. But the real world, of course, is messier. Policymakers around the world such as Hammack are increasingly worried about growth in an arcane corner of finance called the cash-futures basis trade.

This arises from a disconnect between prices for contracts to buy bonds in the future and the value of bonds eligible for their delivery. It is nearly free money that is available for those with the wherewithal to take it.

The basis trade makes money, but not very much per dollar deployed. To eke out decent returns you need leverage. Before the global financial crisis investment banks took this money. But following systemwide financial meltdown and subsequent bailout, post-crisis regulation was brought in to limit bank leverage, forcing banks to exit some activities. While this might be great for taxpayers, it has been less great for the hyper-efficiency of fixed income markets.

Hedge funds have since stepped into the void, and with gusto. Instead of making calls about the future of monetary policy or geopolitics, fast money has been buying Treasury bonds and selling futures — the Wall Street equivalent of hoovering up nickels on the sidewalk.

It’s hard to put a precise number on it, but the IMF estimates hedge funds now account for around 11 per cent of the US Treasury market, and that basis trades constitute around $1tn of this position. In Europe the footprint is much more modest, measured in the mere tens of billions, though ECB analysis suggests it has grown quickly. As central banks unwind their Covid-era bond purchases and governments continue to run substantial deficits, should we be thankful that hedge funds are there to absorb the supply? As always, there’s a catch.

The popularity of the basis trade has fuelled the growth in hedge fund leverage to new highs. According to the US Office of Financial Research, hedge fund borrowing in so-called repo markets has increased by $1.5tn since the end of 2022, almost a trillion of which is accounted for by solely the largest 10 funds.

And the risk is that leverage creates vulnerabilities in market-based finance which amplify shocks. This risk is not just theoretical. During the turmoil in US overnight money markets in September 2019 and the generalised mayhem of March 2020, the basis trade unwound, contributing to Treasury market problems that forced the Fed to step in.

Market-based finance is supposedly less prone to herding because risk is spread across a diffuse set of buyers. But as the UK pension fund crisis in 2022 demonstrated, if market participants operate with a common operating model and motivation, they can act as one and throw bond markets into chaos. With such a large basis trade, it’s easy to see how market tremors are increasingly putting officials on edge.

Paradoxically, obvious remedies — mandating greater collateral on overnight borrowings and futures contracts, and a shift to central clearing of trades — are the sort of thing that might trigger rather than defuse a market crisis. Leverage is dangerous at a system-level precisely because it introduces the risk of rapid synchronised deleveraging. As the saying goes, “it’s not the speed that kills, it’s the sudden stop”. Mandating higher margin requirements could catalyse this threat.

The Financial Services Board, a body set up by the G20 to co-ordinate national financial authorities, recommends central banks step up their monitoring, development of strategies to address vulnerabilities, as well as more information sharing across borders. In her speech, Hammack raised the prospect of relaxing a cap on the amount of leverage a bank can take relative to its capital, giving dealers room to help hedge funds unwind their trades in times of stress. The Bank of England meanwhile is working on a facility to allow non-bank markets participants to borrow cash against gilts in such periods Both look like good practical ideas.

It’s not hard to imagine the US Treasury market being tested with shocks over the next four years. While the cash-futures basis trade is, in theory, riskless, regulators are right to look to it as a potential catalyst for instability. And as the fictional Duke brothers will attest, financial calamities can most usually be traced to a seemingly safe trade being leveraged up.

How a random chess variant won over the world’s best players

In a barn by the Baltic Sea, Magnus Carlsen makes his move

The majestic Weissenhaus estate has been owned by nobles, survived a devastating fire and hosted world leaders. Its striking castle, white facade illuminated by the glow from the windows, sits on the banks of the Baltic, in northern Germany. A golden frieze stands out against the dark, pitched roof.

In a big barn opposite the castle, a crowd has gathered. On stage is a towering man, the owner of Weissenhaus. Jan Henric Buettner, lit by red lights against a dark curtain, grips the back of a large, transparent table. He tips hundreds of numbered lottery balls down a slide, where they cascade into an orb-like bowl.

At the invitation of the host, I dip into the cluster and pluck out a sphere. Number 328. This ball, in its own small way, will determine the outcome of the inaugural Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour.

Freestyle Chess is a new name for an old idea, a variant in which the pieces on the back row — king, queen, rooks, bishops and knights — start in a randomised position. The pieces on the other side mirror this arrangement. It’s also known as Fischer Random, after Bobby Fischer, the American chess legend, or as Chess960, after the number of possible starting positions. Fischer had grown sick of how theory stifled creativity in the regular game. “I’m not anti-chess, I’m pro-chess,” he explained. “I’m trying to keep it alive.”

Technological advances have compounded Fischer’s complaints. Since Garry Kasparov lost to IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in 1997, chess engines have consolidated their power. Smartphones can crush grandmasters. Elite players memorise the machine’s lessons and mimic them over the board. It can all feel a little rote. “Imagine if we were playing soccer and it was all about penalty shots,” the Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian says on a cold walk on the coastline. “Let’s say I have amazing speed and dribbling, [but] all I have to do is shoot the ball into the net. That’s what classical chess feels like quite often for us.” (Later Aronian, in response to my “challenge”, beats me in 22 moves, despite advancing his queen earlier than is wise.) 

Magnus Carlsen, 34, the world’s top-ranked player, is also sick of penalty kicks. He dropped out of the world championship in 2022 after growing tired of the gruelling, weeks-long format and months of preparation required. Carlsen’s successors — China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju — won the title without the involvement of the world’s best player.

About a year later, Carlsen was approached by a wealthy German businessman. Together, they developed a vision for invigorating the ancient game, loosening the machines’ grip and reintroducing the human element. 

Buettner is a Hamburg-born entrepreneur with a background in telecoms. As an executive, he foresaw the internet’s rise in the 1990s, but had to fight for his share of the proceeds when Bertelsmann AG sold its AOL Europe stake for $6.75bn in 2000. He and another Bertelsmann executive settled for $194mn between them. Flush with cash, Buettner bought the rundown Weissenhaus estate and spent nearly two decades developing it into a luxury retreat with a spa and two Michelin stars.

Like millions of people, Buettner fell in love with chess following the Covid-19 pandemic. He improved his game with the hired help of a German grandmaster. Eventually, he envisioned a chess competition with the spectacle of Formula 1 and the personality of its hit docuseries, Drive to Survive. Players would wear brightly coloured jackets, track their heart rates and enter “confession booths” for mid-game interviews. And thanks to the lottery balls, the games would be unpredictable. In July 2024, Buettner raised €10mn from New York-based venture capitalists Left Lane Capital.

At Weissenhaus, Carlsen stays in the GOAT Villa (so named for this event), one of the property’s luxurious accommodations. His star power is crucial to Buettner’s plans for a tour that elevates chess players to celebrities, earns fees from sponsors and hosts, and capitalises on the game’s growing online fan base.

But Freestyle has clashed with Fide, the game’s international governing body, over its plan to crown a world champion, which Fide believes only it has the authority to award. Fide threatened legal action and warned players they would be expected to sign a contract that would bar them from the next two world championships for participating in an unauthorised “world championship”, a chilling prospect for grandmasters not named Magnus Carlsen.

Buettner complained about Fide’s “coercive tactics” and questioned how any organisation could claim a monopoly on the word “world”, but ultimately removed the clashing references. The winner will be crowned Freestyle Chess Champion. The move will be revisited in a postseason review.

This isn’t Carlsen’s first spat with Fide. Late last year, he was fined $200 for wearing jeans at the World Rapid Championship. He withdrew, but returned when Fide relaxed the dress code. Fide remains hopeful that the parties can reconcile. “It requires building more trust, it requires building a more respectful environment, but it is possible,” Arkady Dvorkovich, its president, said in an interview.

I ask Sverre Sundbø, a Norwegian television presenter, if he thinks his fellow countryman Carlsen will ever play Fide events again. Just then, the king of chess enters the room. “Magnus, what should I answer?” Sundbø asks, laughing. Carlsen’s response is withering. “Probably not,” he says and slips away.

There’s a shock in the barn. Vincent Keymer, 20, defeats Carlsen in the semi-finals. The GOAT can finish only as high as third. The young German awaits either Fabiano Caruana of the US or Javokhir Sindarov of Uzbekistan in the final, and their match rages on for almost eight hours as they play a baffling array of arrangements — including ball 328. Slow games fail to divide them. Rapid and blitz games follow. Finally, Caruana, currently the world number two, prevails. By nightfall, players and staff are shattered. Snow falls ahead of a two-day final that culminates on Valentine’s Day.

Freestyle’s success will rely on chess’s modern internet and media ecosystem. Platforms such as Chess.com, a partner to Freestyle, have boomed since The Queen’s Gambit, the hit Netflix series, was released during the pandemic. Word is that a production company has been filming here behind the scenes, in search of the next mainstream moment.

There’s a shock in the barn. Vincent Keymer, 20, defeats Magnus Carlsen in the semi-finals. The GOAT can finish only as high as third

The content creators Anna Cramling and the pseudonymous JulesGambit have just filmed for YouTube. I ask them what stands out at Weissenhaus. Game night, they say, where chess is swapped for the role-playing contest Avalon. “You’ve got bad guys and good guys, and we’ll all start accusing each other,” Jules says.

This game night, Caruana sits in front of a fireplace at his Weissenhaus residence, joined by Cramling, Jules and a dozen others, including the popular chess-streaming sisters Alexandra and Andrea Botez. Streamers and grandmasters become servants of King Arthur or minions of the villainous Mordred. Game night is in the centre of a Venn diagram of chess, gaming and internet  culture, a small taste of the evolutionary leaps  that are transforming tradition.

But with investors on site, Freestyle’s media strategy runs into trouble. Daniel Naroditsky, another influential commentator and grandmaster, has walked out and aired a series of grievances with Freestyle on Twitch. Naroditsky criticised Buettner for booking too many commentators and for “denigrating” chess notation. He also complained that Weissenhaus was too isolated for him to track down a decent doner kebab. But his concerns ran deeper: can Freestyle engage casual fans, or is it a niche event for the elite?

Buettner gives Naroditsky an earful over the phone. Following an intervention by Aronian, Buettner finds a way to bring Naroditsky back into the fold, albeit online rather than on site. Buettner regrets his initial reaction, but his concern is understandable; chess is an online phenomenon and talk travels fast.

Online chess will debut at the Saudi Arabia-backed Esports World Cup in Riyadh later this year. The event will offer a $1.5mn prize pool, double Weissenhaus’s. Chess will be played alongside popular video games such as League of Legends and Call of Duty. Carlsen and Caruana have signed for Team Liquid, one of the biggest brands in esports.

While Caruana welcomes these developments, he worries about “growing the game out of our  control”. “I’m a bit of a purist in terms of chess,” he says, “so I don’t want to see it completely lose its identity. Chess has a very long legacy and it completely precedes the internet age.”

As the final approaches, the chess-media machine kicks into action. From a string of studios alongside the barn, content creators, commentators and chess legends talk viewers through the action.

On the pro stream, Judit Polgár, the only woman ever to reach the top 10, and grandmaster Peter Leko, who doubles as Keymer’s coach, are joined by Aronian to deliver deep analysis to sophisticated viewers. On the community stream, James “Dash” Patterson plays the role of outsider; he is better known for commentating on League of Legends and other esports. Levy Rozman, aka GothamChess, explains the game in the plain terms that have earned him millions of subscribers and the moniker of the Internet’s Chess Teacher.

Freestyle’s major backers have flown in. Left Lane Capital chief Harley Miller wears all black, from his trenchcoat to his spiky sneakers.

Keymer’s golden jacket is draped on his chair. It’s a fitting colour, as he has the measure of the lottery positions once again. Keymer and Caruana draw the final game, ending the American’s chances of a comeback. With a slightly raised brow, Caruana extends his hand. Keymer takes a final glance at the pieces, and shakes to secure the $200,000 prize, the biggest of his young career. A glitzy ceremony follows and the party continues after dinner. Keymer plays poker in the cellar with a few of the guests. Staff and other revellers dance into the night.

The next morning, Buettner wakes characteristically early. In his office, he’s surrounded by mementos of the F1 hospitality he wants to emulate. The man who fought for his share of the AOL Europe proceeds and invested the cash into a village near his birthplace is now the CEO of a chess start-up. He plans to step back into the role of chair later this year. An investor tells me the next move is to turn Freestyle into a business. Lower cost, more revenue. Although Freestyle Chess is now funded by venture capitalists, Buettner can’t hide the emotion in his voice when he thinks of the players. “I would never leave them,” he says. “I would always fight for them.”

Carlsen plays a game of golf before flying off. The world’s greatest chess player is headed to Texas for an interview with Joe Rogan, the podcast host. The episode will eventually have more than four million views on YouTube. Then, last month, Carlsen put the jeans that offended Fide up for auction on eBay for the benefit of a youth charity. The winning bidder snagged them for $36,100.

Prosecutions have been elusive since the military alliance began responding forcefully to suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea

Just after midnight on Dec. 26, a team of Finnish commandos dropped from two helicopters onto the deck of a ramshackle Russian oil tanker in the Baltic Sea and ordered the ship’s crew to sail into port.

They were acting on the orders of Finnish officials who suspected the Eagle S had hours earlier dragged its anchor along the seabed to slice through a vital power cable between Finland and Estonia. The Finnish action also potentially prevented the ship from cutting another cable nearby, officials say.

It was the latest incident of suspected sabotage involving ships carrying Russian cargo in the region, and the first time authorities had boarded a suspicious vessel while it was under way.

Then came the real work: finding the evidence to prove sabotage.

Finnish law-enforcement officials questioned the crew and scoured the 750-foot-long ship, digging through its logs and inspecting its anchor, which was torn from its chain during the incident. But Finnish and other officials familiar with the probe say they weren’t able to uncover enough evidence to issue arrest warrants or for prosecutors to press charges related to deliberate wrongdoing.

The ship was released on March 2, but three crew members are still under investigation and have to remain in the country, Finland’s police said in a statement.

Proving sabotage is difficult and requires significant evidence or testimonies to support the finding, say investigators, prosecutors and officials involved in the investigations. To issue an arrest warrant or bring a case, prosecutors must provide substantial evidence of intentional wrongdoing, rather than an accidental and unnoticed dropping of an anchor.

“Even if you show it was deliberate, it’s extremely unlikely you’ll find a paper trail linking the incident to a state actor,” said Elisabeth Braw, an expert in combat below the threshold of warfare, who is writing a book on subsea geopolitical conflict.

The difficulties of prosecuting such cases are frustrating Western officials who are trying to combat what they say is a hybrid war against critical infrastructure in the West that they blame on Russia.

The Kremlin, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, has denied attacks on Western infrastructure in the past.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has taken a newly aggressive posture in response to such events in the Baltic, home to a handful of Russia’s ice-free commercial ports, and one of the busiest trade corridors in the world. But holding anyone accountable for the incidents is proving hard.

The Eagle S captain told police the Christmastime incident was an accident, according to people familiar with the investigation. Caravella LLC-FZ, the Emirati company which owns the ship, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Having found no link between the damaged cable and the Kremlin or any other government, the Finnish government has released the ship, the people said.

To keep the ship until now, prosecutors have focused on lesser offenses such as environmental and customs violations, these people said.

Captains of other vessels have also blamed mistakes for recent damage their ships are linked to in the Baltic.

In November, the Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 was suspected of dragging its anchor for miles along the Baltic seafloor. Western intelligence agencies alleged in private at the time that the captain was acting on the orders of Russian operatives while the ship was moored in a Russian dock earlier that month, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Investigations by German and other European authorities, including a search of the ship that Beijing only permitted to take place on the condition that Chinese officials led it, didn’t result in evidence to support that allegation, people familiar with that probe told the Journal.

Beijing didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The possibility that the anchor had dropped accidentally is all but ruled out, investigators said, but they added there was a chance that gross negligence or bad weather had played a part.

Investigators established only that the FSB, Russia’s largest security service, which also manages the country’s borders, held the ship for two days after it was loaded in one of Russia’s Baltic ports. They weren’t able to find out why it was held. The FSB didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Across the world’s 450 subsea cable systems, spanning almost one million miles, more than 150 technical faults and other problems occur each year globally, according to the International Cable Protection Committee, a trade group. Up to 80% of cable-damage incidents are caused by accidents linked to commercial fishing and ship anchors, the ICPC said.

Overall trends in accidents are hard to assess but the number of incidents involving severe harm is increasing, said Braw.

Four major Baltic incidents, which damaged undersea cables and a gas pipeline, occurred over the past 16 months. They all involved ships that had been operating between Russian ports or were carrying Russian cargo. The Kremlin has denied wrongdoing.

The incidents prompted NATO to launch a new mission, Baltic Sentry. It is conducting naval patrols and enhanced drone, satellite and electronic surveillance of Baltic Sea areas that are packed with critical infrastructure such as data and power cables, as well as gas pipelines and offshore wind farms.

In the first incident of suspected sabotage, in October 2023, Chinese bulk carrier Newnew Polar Bear cut a data cable and a natural-gas pipeline with its anchor. The ship was allowed to continue its journey despite being under investigation.

The Yi Peng 3 cut two data cables in the same region in the November incident. The Danish navy effectively forced the ship to stop, and China ordered the captain to wait for investigators to board the vessel, which was loaded with Russian fertilizer.

A month later, Finland detained the Eagle S, registered in the Cook Islands, on suspicion it had cut the power cable to Estonia.

On Jan. 26, Vezhen, a Bulgarian bulk carrier that had just departed the Russian port Ust-Luga, was detained and boarded by Swedish special police after damaging a subsea cable, in the first deployment of NATO’s Baltic Sentry. The ship was detained and later released by Swedish prosecutors.

The owner said armed Swedish officers “aggressively” boarded the Vezhen.

NATO, inspired by Finland’s decisive raid on the Eagle S, will continue acting forcefully to deter attacks on critical infrastructure, said James Appathurai, NATO assistant deputy secretary-general in charge of hybrid warfare.

“The captains and crews of ships that are thinking of acts of sabotage should be aware,” he said.

As the U.S. and its Western allies tightened sanctions against Russian energy exports, Moscow started deploying warships to escort its “shadow fleet” of tankers in the Baltic, sometimes including powerful missile ships, according to several European officials.

The Eagle S severed one of the two electricity cables linking Finland and Estonia. The second cable might have been saved from potential damage by the Finnish coast guard’s fast action, said retired Dutch admiral Rob Bauer, who recently completed a term as NATO’s most senior military official.

“Whether it’s bad seamanship or negligence on the part of these ships, or whether it was planned by the Russians…we shouldn’t care. This is wrong,” said Bauer. “It’s a good signal to the Russians and others to see that we are taking action.”

After Denmark stopped the Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 in November, the ship spent over a month anchored in international waters in the Kattegat Strait between Sweden and Denmark before Beijing allowed investigators aboard.

China cooperated with the investigation, several European officials said. Beijing dispatched a delegation of 19 officers and investigators, of whom 14 came on board together with a team of 19 led by Germany and including European observers, according to a person who was present during the probe. All of the crew members were Chinese nationals.

The probe found that a security mechanism to prevent an accidental dropping of the anchors was operational and had to be manually disabled to drop anchor. The ship log showed the anchor was secured when it left the Russian port of Ust-Luga. The log didn’t record the system being disabled or the anchor being dropped mid-journey.

The ship, which is over two decades old, was in very poor condition and the crew appeared disorganized and uncoordinated, the probe found.

The 41-year-old captain first commanded a ship only months before the incident, having served as a senior officer for a decade. He told investigators he and his crew didn’t notice the dropped anchor because of high waves, which they blamed at the time for the ship’s reduced speed. The captain said he raised the anchor once the weather calmed and he noticed it was down.

When the ship lost nearly half of its speed due to the anchor drag, the automatic pilot switched itself off because it can’t operate at speeds below 6 knots, investigators found.

Investigators, who ran a computer model of the incident, found that the ship was sailing in somewhat turbulent weather conditions and that the scenario described by the captain was plausible.

They spent around five hours on board before allowing the Yi Peng 3 to continue, under an agreement with Chinese authorities.

People familiar with the investigation, which is continuing, say they have all but ruled out the possibility the anchor was dropped accidentally. The system that prevents the anchor from dropping accidentally was functioning, they said. One explanation could be gross negligence, they said. Deliberate action can’t be excluded, but there isn’t evidence to support that, they added.

The eight Eagle S crew members were banned from leaving Finland during the investigation. And the probe shifted focus to the negative environmental impact of the ramshackle ship loaded with Russian oil, manned by Georgian and Indian nationals. Investigators are also looking at potential customs and other violations that fall well short of sabotage, according to the officials.

Investigations into civilian vessels sailing under third-country flags will always face severe diplomatic, administrative and legal challenges, said Nick Thomson, a former CIA paramilitary officer who participated in clandestine naval operations.

Missions such as NATO’s Baltic Sentry should be selective because of the high costs and operation requirements, and they should rely instead on more underwater, surface and aerial drones to investigate and deter such incidents, he said.

Company says it will take it longer than expected to make Siri more personalized

Apple AAPL 1.59%increase; green up pointing triangle said it is delaying an upgrade to Siri that is enhanced by artificial intelligence.

The company, which has faced slumping iPhone sales in recent months, on Friday said that it would take it longer than expected to make Siri more personalized and to enable it to take action for the user within and across apps.

“It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year,” the company said.

The delay follows recent efforts from Apple to make Siri more conversational, and an integration with OpenAI‘s ChatGPT, the company said.

In September, Apple unveiled a new generation of iPhones that put AI at the forefront in order to attract consumers through new AI features.

These tools, called “Apple Intelligence,” were set to include an improved Siri voice assistant and a variety of text-generation and photo-editing capabilities.

The Cupertino, Calif., company most recently reported iPhone sales for the key December quarter were down nearly 1% from the prior year, to $69.1 billion, a miss from the $70.7 billion analysts were projecting, according to FactSet.

The investor has been working behind the scenes at the tech-services firm and isn’t currently planning to nominate directors

Activist investor Mantle Ridge has built a more than $1 billion stake in Cognizant CTSH -0.39%decrease; red down pointing triangle Technology Solutions and believes shares of the tech-services firm are undervalued, according to people familiar with the matter.

The details

Mantle Ridge started buying up shares in the second half of 2022, when the stock was trading in the high $50s to low $60s per-share range. Cognizant shares now trade at around $83 per share, giving the company a market value of more than $41 billion.

Mantle Ridge has been privately engaging with Cognizant about the company’s progress on boosting its share price, the people said. (Cognizant named a new CEO, Ravi Kumar, in January 2023.)

The engagement reflects a new approach for the activist firm, which has so far elected to work behind the scenes at Cognizant. Mantle Ridge isn’t planning to nominate board directors at this time, the people said.

However, Mantle Ridge still believes Cognizant shares are undervalued and that the market doesn’t fully appreciate the progress that has been made, the people said. It believes the company has more room to grow and intends to remain closely engaged with management, they said.

Cognizant said in a statement that it has been constructively engaging with Mantle Ridge. Since Kumar’s appointment, it said it has improved performance and driven total shareholder return of approximately 40%.

Teaneck, N.J.-based Cognizant helps companies update their IT systems and outsource certain business functions. Its peer group includes Accenture, Infosys and Cap Gemini.

The context

Cognizant has grappled with stagnant growth in recent years, posting a 2% increase in revenue in 2024 after a slight decrease in 2023.

Mantle Ridge expects Cognizant should be able to quickly meet the growth targets made as part of its full-year guidance released in February, the people familiar with the matter said.

Kumar said in a February earnings call that the company is focused on having revenue growth among the best in the industry and expanding margins.

Cognizant is expected to host an analyst day later this month to discuss its focus on capitalizing on businesses looking to implement artificial intelligence.

Unlike many other activist investors, Mantle Ridge typically focuses on only one or two positions at a time. Earlier this year, the firm run by Paul Hilal secured three board seats and effectively ousted the chief executive of Air Products and Chemicals after a shareholder vote.

The CEO of OpenAI imagines a future where you’ll need to constantly demonstrate that you’re not a bot. His ‘everything app’ is the answer—but first, he needs to look deep into your eyes.

Imagine a world full of basketball-sized “Orbs” that stare deep into our eyes, capturing the unique pattern of our irises.

These ubiquitous Orbs would allow us to do anything requiring identification, online or in real life, from buying bread to paying taxes. It’s a vision reminiscent of other recent efforts—including Amazon’s attempt to replace credit cards with our palms, and Ant Group’s efforts in China to make it possible to pay with your face.

The big difference? The builders of an app called World—including Chief Executive Alex Blania and his co-founder Sam Altman of OpenAI fame—envision a time in the not-too-distant future when you can’t do much without an ocular check-in. AI agents will be so prevalent, and so humanlike, that we’ll need to repeatedly prove we’re real to prevent those AIs from masquerading as humans on everything from payment platforms to social networks.

To accelerate adoption of what World calls its “anonymous proof-of-human” system, the company recently launched a mini app store inside its app, which is available for iPhones and Android devices.

World’s mini app store is part of a broader strategy to create an “everything app.” These apps—also called “super apps”—are common throughout Asia, where WeChat, Grab, Alipay and KakaoTalk allow users to do everything from shopping and chatting to ordering a meal or a ride.

World’s mini app store, which currently includes services to send and receive cryptocurrency, chat with verified humans and access microloans, is a first step toward creating what Altman, Blania and their team hope will be a vast ecosystem reaching more than a billion people. And as the company’s identification system expands, they anticipate their main competitor will be Elon Musk’s own attempt at an everything app: X.

“I think it will take a while until we seriously collide,” Blania told me on Tuesday, “given that X is primarily now a social network.” The app formerly known as Twitter has yet to launch its payment service, a key component of Musk’s vision. Besides, World has yet to properly launch in the U.S. No Orbs to gaze into…yet.

Within about 12 months, however, Blania believes the two services will start to compete in earnest. If so, it would be a notable development in part because making everything apps work in the West has proved extremely difficult. The bottom line is that, for most people with an Android phone or iPhone who haven’t grown up in the tech ecosystems of Asia, those app stores already offer the versatility and flexibility that everything apps do.

Sam Altman’s involvement in World might also encourage competition between World and X, by virtue of Musk’s pugilistic nature and the already intense rivalry between Altman and Musk. World is no mere side project for Altman, says Blania, who speaks with him a couple of times a week: “He’s involved in essentially every major decision that I make.”

Few people in the U.S. have heard of World, formerly known as Worldcoin. If they have, it’s probably on account of the company’s unique biometric identification system, the Orb. So far, Orb-ing millions of people hasn’t proved popular with governments around the world, as more than a dozen have either suspended its operations in their countries or else examined its handling of personal data.

World investor and venture capitalist Ben Horowitz said on a recent episode of his podcast with Marc Andreessen that with the loosening of restrictions on crypto companies in the U.S., he anticipates World will become “legal” in the U.S. this year. At present, the company doesn’t scan eyeballs in the U.S. or allow Americans to hold its Worldcoin token, for fear of regulators, Altman has said. When I asked how long it will be until World sets up locations in the U.S. where people can walk in, present their irises and become part of the network, Blania declined to say. But, he adds, the effort is “top of mind” for him.

In general, Blania brushes aside concerns about regulators both in the U.S. and abroad.

“I know the properties of the system, I’m extremely convinced about its compliance, and about the fact that I think it exceeds the actual expectations of these regulators,” he says. “It’s just a matter of getting them to understand every part of the system.”

World recently hired a former X executive to be the company’s head of privacy.

Other systems that rely on biometrics have unnerved users and governments in the past. It’s easy to forget the hue and cry once raised about Face ID on the iPhone, the face-scanning technology most people now use to unlock their Apple devices. When it was introduced, there were concerns about it both as a potential security liability and because of the way it evoked mass-surveillance systems in China that rely on face recognition.

World says its network is anonymous and secure, and only proves you’re a person—but it could be made part of a broader identity system. One of World’s distinguishing features is that it is an “anonymous proof of human” system. That is, its eyeball scan can verify that you’re a human being and not an AI, but without additional software and systems, it can’t identify who you are. What could drive people to adopt a system like World’s will be the rise of ever-more-sophisticated AIs that will make doing business on the internet almost impossible without something like it, says Tiago Sada, chief product officer at the company.

World’s “proof of human” powers were a unique enabler of a new mini-app in the World app store called Credit, says Diego, the Argentina-based developer of the app, who goes by only his first name. Credit gives people microloans of between $5 and $100 with no collateral—but will ban users who default on loans. People can’t circumvent the ban by creating a new Credit account, because of their unique, durable, and bot-proof identifier on the World network, Diego says. The app has racked up 70,000 users in Argentina since its launch in December, and is turning a profit, he adds.

While it seems that the ambitions of both World and X put them on a collision course, there are also plenty of reasons to be skeptical about how likely they are to achieve their goals.

World has only Orb-verified 11 million people worldwide, despite the fact that it literally pays them—via Worldcoin crypto tokens—to get their eyeballs scanned. (At its start, World doled out 25 tokens per scan, roughly $25 at today’s prices, and now offers 16 tokens per scan.) And the launch date for X’s Money Account service is unclear. The company has said it will count Visa as its first partner. X did not respond to requests for comment.

Visa CEO Ryan McInerney said on the company’s most recent earnings call that X Money will use Visa’s systems to allow users to fund their “X Wallet” with a debit card, which will also enable peer-to-peer transactions on X.

X has vastly more users than World does, but it’s unclear how many people will be eager to entrust an Elon Musk-owned company with their financial lives.

In the end, it’s trust that is most likely to decide the fate of both companies. Blania says he’s sure that in time, regulators and privacy experts will validate his confidence in the security of World.

“The way this system is built, it is provably much more secure” than its potential competitors, he says. “It’s like actual privacy rocket science that I think has never been deployed in that way in the world.”

President Donald Trump’s drive to shake up the world order is creating some surprising winners.

As the U.S. stock market reels from tariff fears, German stocks are surging because the government has committed to almost $1 trillion in new spending on infrastructure and defense. That has also changed the outlook for bonds, pushing yields up by the most since the country reunified in 1990 on Wednesday, though they are still well below U.S. levels.

The sea change in policy is creating a giddy optimism in German markets not seen in decades. It flies in the face of the country’s hard-earned reputation for fiscal rectitude and its extreme reluctance, since the end of World War II, to step up military spending. The shift could be comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

Germany’s response to the threats from the U.S. to pull back military support and to impose tariffs has been the polar opposite of Trump’s approach in his second term. While the U.S. president is swiftly slashing government jobs and boasting of billions of dollars of spending cuts, Germany is increasing the size of the state.

Even after retreating Friday, the blue-chip DAX index has gained 2.2% over the past five days. Since the start of the year, it has risen 16%, compared with a slight drop for the S&P 500.

The European Central Bank did its part to fuel the gains on Thursday, lowering interest rates by a quarter point, widening the gap in borrowing costs with the U.S. The Federal Reserve kept rates unchanged at its last meeting.

The surge in German bond yields has been dramatic, but it still leaves the 10-year Bund at about 2.8%. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, while much lower than it was earlier this year, is just below 4.3%. That lower cost of capital is good for companies that need to borrow money to expand.

For investors, it isn’t too late to take advantage of the shift across the Atlantic. True, the rally in European defense stocks may have its strongest days behind it. Rheinmetall, the German defense contractor, is up about 90% this year. France’s Thales is up more than 70%, as is Italy’s Leonardo.

There are also areas that may still be under the radar. Stocks in countries near Germany may get a boost, particularly if other governments follow the lead of the biggest economy and step up spending. France’s CAC 40, Italy’s MIB, and Spain’s IBEX are also rising sharply.

There are also sectors to look at outside of defense. Germany’s infrastructure spending will be a boon for companies such as Heidelberg Materials, up about 40% this year, and Siemens Energy, which has gained 10%.

Banks are also benefiting. Deutsche Bank, the country’s biggest lender, is up 7% over the past five days and its rival Commerzbank is up 13%.

The biggest gains from this point will probably come from companies too small to be in the DAX index, Germany’s market benchmark. The DAX has outperformed smaller stocks even as the economy has languished because those big companies’ earnings and growth benefit more from sales abroad. Companies that need a vibrant domestic economy are due for a catch-up. The MDAX index is up just 14% over the past year, compared with about 30% for the DAX.

The Magnificent Seven stocks have lost their magnificence—and it may not be restored anytime soon.

None of the Mag Seven has performed well of late. Through Thursday trading, Tesla stock had tumbled 45% from its 52-week closing high of about $480, while Apple, Amazon.com, Alphabet, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia are off an average of 16% from their own peaks. Fears include a slowing economy due to uncertain U.S. trade policies, Chinese artificial-intelligence competition, and, in the case of Tesla, the impact of CEO Elon Musk’s political activity on auto sales. It’s ugly, and it can feel like there’s no end in sight.

Anyone familiar with technical analysis, however, knows that there is always a bottom; it’s just a question of how far a stock has to fall to reach it. Technicians use price charts to determine where investors may decide to buy or sell stocks. They look for support—a level on the downside that could attract the optimists who want to bet on the stock rising—and resistance—where the skeptics could decide to sell—for intimations of where shares could go next.

The 50-day and 200-day moving averages are considered particularly important. As their names suggest, they indicate the average of where the stock has traded over a period—50 days for shorter-term traders and 200 days for longer term investors.

The good news is that the Mag Seven stocks look due for a bounce, at least according to the charts. Most are close to their 200-day moving averages, which can act as a cushion for stocks, says Fairlead Strategies founder and market technician Katie Stockton. What’s more, most of the seven appear oversold, which means shares have gone down a lot, and quickly, reflecting a lot of fear all at once.

But all Mag Seven stocks aren’t created equal. Stockton is least fond of Apple and Microsoft, the two largest U.S. stocks by market value. Both have their critics. The bears say Apple’s iPhone 16 isn’t driving more users to upgrade, while Microsoft’s cloud growth has decelerated. But both have held up pretty well. At a recent $235, Apple is down 9% from its all-time high. At $397, Microsoft is off 15%. Neither stock looks ready for a big bounce, says Stockton.

She observes that Apple isn’t as oversold as the rest and Microsoft is below its 200-day moving average. Both look range-bound. Apple will likely trade between $220 and $250. Microsoft’s range looks to be $390 to $440.

Like Microsoft, Nvidia’s stock is also trading below its 200-day moving average, but it has also fallen further from its 52-week high—it’s down 26%—and has the potential for a bigger bounce, of, say, 20%. It also has a catalyst, with its GTC conference set to begin on March 17. If CEO Jensen Huang can work his magic, maybe that bounce happens sooner rather than later. It’s likely to be just a bounce, however. Nvidia will likely be range-bound for a while, Stockton says, after posting gains of 240% and 170% in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

Alphabet is sitting just below its 200-day moving average after dropping 15%, while Amazon is sitting right on it after falling 17%. Like Microsoft, both have been weighed down by decelerating cloud growth. The stocks, however, could be poised to gain about 10% to close the gap with their 50-day moving averages.

Tesla, the hardest hit of the group, may be the most tempting, Stockton says. Shares have tumbled just below their 200-day moving average but, at $263, are more than $100 below their 50-day moving average. Of the septet, Tesla has the largest gap, by far, between its two moving averages—and the most room to bounce if investors’ fears subside.

There are reasons Tesla stock is oversold and looking for a bounce. Early 2025 sales data from around the globe show year-over-year declines even as investors are still expecting growth. Weak numbers are feeding fears that CEO Elon Musk’s political activities are impacting Tesla’s brand and turning off core buyers—politically left-leaning people looking to go green.

While Tesla might be the most intriguing, Stockton’s favorite is Meta Platforms. At $628, Meta stock is down 15% from its 52-week high and still well above its 200-day moving average. It has other support near $630, while the charts point to possible advances to $750 or $930 in the year to come. “It’s stronger from a long-term technical perspective,” she says.

The charts also contain a warning for investors. If there’s a running theme, it’s that the Mag Seven stocks, for the most part, look like they are range-bound even if they do bounce back soon. After two years of stock market leadership—and big gains—Stockton expects a period of consolidation, where shares flatten out for a while. “It’s tough to make a [technical] case for any of these for [the] long term,” says Stockton.

That might be tough for investors to swallow after the average Mag Seven stock gained an average of 110% in 2023 and 60% in 2024. For now, trading in a range could be the best-case scenario.

While Stockton isn’t making a fundamental call on any of the stocks, fundamentally minded investors shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the chart patterns, which reflect all the sentiment and news at any given moment. “You never abandon a chart,” says Stockton.

And in market seas as uncertain as these, the chart might be the best map we have.