Barrons : Bill Ackman Is Killing It. A New ETF Will Track His Investments.

Bill Ackman Is Killing It. A New ETF Will Track His Investments.

Bill Ackman is off to a strong start in 2025 thanks to a winning investment in Fannie Mae, and now his success has attracted an imitator.

Tidal Trust has filed for an exchange-traded fund keyed off Ackman's investments, the Vista Shares Pershing Square Select ETF. Tidal Trust will also offer ETFs tied to investments by these other notables: Stan Druckenmiller, Michael Burry, and Warren Buffett.

Ackman's chief investment vehicle is the London-listed Pershing Square Holdings. The closed-end fund returned 12.8% through Tuesday based on its net asset value, against a 1% total return for the S&P 500 index. The fund, which also trades in the U.S. under the ticker PSHZF, was off 0.5% to $53.14 a share Friday.

Pershing Square Holdings has gotten a big boost from its investments in Fannie Mae and Federal Home Loan Mortgage, whose shares have surged this year on expectations the Trump administration will free them from federal conservatorship. Fannie Mae stock, at around $10.50, has tripled this year and is up almost tenfold from where it traded about a year ago.

Ackman said on a recent investor call available on the fund's website that his firm owns about 220 million shares of the two mortgage agencies, a stake now worth about $2 billion. Pershing Square is one of the largest holders of the two stocks.

It has been a busy 2025 for Ackman. He got approval for his Pershing Square holding company and Pershing Square Capital Management to buy $900 million of Howard Hughes stock and turn the real estate company into a diversified holding company -- what he has called a mini Berkshire Hathaway. He also has been active on X, where he has 1.7 million followers, with critiques of his alma mater Harvard University.

While Ackman has scored this year, Pershing Square Holdings trades at a steep 35% discount to its net asset value based on Tuesday's stock price, about two percentage points wider than the start of this year. The fund has persistently traded at a 20%-plus discount to net asset value in recent years.

The fund has about 180 million shares outstanding, giving it a market value of $9.5 billion and a net asset value of over $14 billion. Ackman owns more than 20% of Pershing Square Holdings.

Barron's has written that the fund offers an inexpensive way to get access to Ackman and what has been a market-beating record.

Pershing Square Holdings did trail the S&P 500 last year with a return of 10%, against about 25% for the index. But it is way ahead of the S&P 500 over the past five years with a return of 22% annualized (based on the stock price), versus 15% for the index.

Eric Boughton, a portfolio manager at Matisse Capital, whose Matisse Discounted Closed-End Strategy fund (MDCEX) holds Pershing Square Holdings, thinks Fannie Mae and Federal Home Loan Mortgage, known as Freddie Mac, account for most of the fund's outperformance this year relative to the index. He notes Pershing Square Holdings is cheaper than usual based on its discount to net asset value and could benefit from steps by Ackman to narrow the discount.

Other positive fund contributors for Pershing Square Holdings this year are Uber and Hertz Global Holdings, Boughton says.

Pershing Square Holdings holds about a dozen stocks and Ackman's approach is to buy high-quality shares that can compound earnings.

The firm added Amazon and Uber this year while selling Canadian Pacific Kansas City and cutting its stake in Hilton Worldwide Holdings.

Pershing Square Holdings has been handicapped with investors for several reasons -- contributing to the wide discount.

Although Ackman is best known to U.S. investors, the fund trades in Europe -- and some U.S. brokerage firms won't let their U.S. retail clients buy it. The fund generates a PFIC tax form (passive foreign investment company) that is more like a K-1 than a 1099. Many investors don't want to deal with a FPIC form.

Another negative is the fund's fee structure is stiff at 1.5% annually plus 16% of gains subject to a high-water mark. Most U.S. closed end funds have an annual management fee of about one percentage point and no incentive fee.

That is outweighed by access to Pershing Square Holdings and its strong record over the past five years at a huge discount from net asset value.

The new ETF will have a lower fee but won't carry a discount -- and it will have to wait for Ackman to disclose portfolio changes before acting. Ackman has said the delay and other factors give investors in his fund an edge over imitators.

Barrons : Trump Wants to Sink Offshore Wind. This Project Could Test His Reach.

Trump Wants to Sink Offshore Wind. This Project Could Test His Reach.
Dominion Energy’s massive project off the coast of Virginia would be a boon for U.S. jobs and energy needs—not to mention the climate. Its future hangs in the balance.

Twenty-seven miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va., sit 90 gargantuan steel cylinders arranged in a neat pegboard grid. They are the foundations of one of America’s largest industrial projects, an offshore wind development that’s slated to cover 150 square miles of the ocean, six times the size of Manhattan. The turbines that the company plans to install are skyscraper-like too, reaching their apex at 830 feet.

The project’s power capacity rivals the Hoover Dam’s. And if all goes according to plan, the turbines will start spinning next year—just in the nick of time. Virginia has already seen some of the fastest growth in electricity demand in the country. In addition to a growing population, the state hosts more data centers than anywhere else in the world.

On a recent tour of the site, the foundations and two nearby pilot wind turbines looked like a playground for an enormous amphibious civilization. But what’s notable about the project today isn’t its size and solidity—it’s just how precarious it all is.

The Trump administration has set about dismantling the regulatory system designed to help offshore wind projects proceed. The permitting process is on hold, and even projects that have begun construction are now at risk. The Dominion project is the biggest and most important test case of whether offshore wind can survive under Trump.

A similar project almost died this month, until New York officials took extraordinary measures to save it. In April, the Trump administration ordered Empire Wind, a project that was under construction 15 miles off of Long Island, to halt work, citing deficiencies in the permitting process. Trump officials didn’t detail the deficiencies to the press—or even to Equinor, the company said. The president only relented this week after extensive lobbying by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and the finance minister of Norway, which owns the majority of Equinor’s shares.

There’s a reasonable chance that the Virginia project will face the same kind of scrutiny and delays—and even attempts to revoke its permits. Moody’s recently downgraded its outlook for owner Dominion Energy’s debt in light of that risk. The stock has trailed other utilities this year, and would undoubtedly fall sharply if the project is scuttled. “People are increasingly nervous,” said Paul Zimbardo, an analyst who covers Dominion for Jefferies, last week.

Trump has pulled funding for all sorts of clean-energy projects, but he has reserved his most aggressive comments and actions for offshore wind. He says it’s unpopular, expensive, and too harmful to wildlife. The Republican tax proposal passed by the House of Representatives on Thursday would end wind’s tax credits early.

Offshore wind is particularly vulnerable to a federal crackdown because it’s new and hasn’t built up a domestic supply chain or workforce. The industry was invented in Europe and is growing fast in Asia, but it hardly exists in the U.S. Last year, the first large-scale offshore wind farm was completed off New York. A handful of others are under construction, but none are nearly as big as the Dominion project. Solar power, by comparison, has been widely adopted around the country and has a domestic supply chain. It will keep growing regardless of federal policy.

The Virginia project, known as Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, is dealing with risks that go beyond politics. It’s facing a lawsuit from conservative groups that want to kill it on environmental grounds. The federal government is also a defendant in that case. Under the Biden administration, Dominion could count on federal support. But it isn’t as sure about where Trump stands. The administration has until June 23 to respond in court. The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment on its legal strategy.

Even in an ideal world without legal or political threats, the project faced long odds. Dominion signed a lease in 2013 for 113,000 acres of federal seabed off Virginia but didn’t start construction until a decade later, after all the permits and financing came in. To build the turbines, workers must navigate the depths of the ocean, and then scale steel structures that rise as high as an 80-story building. Ladders get them part of the way there, before they cram into a mini-elevator that zips them up the steel tube.

To connect the turbines to deep-sea substations and string them back to the dry-land electric grid, the company will use enough cable to reach from Richmond, Va., to New York City. The supply chain for all those parts stretches around the world, too, to Europe and Asia. Tariffs could add as much as $500 million in new costs to the project.

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Throughout the construction process, unexpected obstacles have continually cropped up. As workers prepped the site, they had to remove unexploded munitions from the ocean floor, remnants of past military exercises stretching as far back as the Civil War. The work doesn’t get easier once the power lines hit land. The company eliminated nearly half the potential routes for its transmission lines because they crossed streams that had ties to Native American history.

Progress often slows to a crawl, or halts entirely, to minimize damage to the ecosystem. Construction stops from November until May to accommodate the migration patterns of endangered right whales. When it starts back up again, all of the project’s ships crawl along at a maximum speed of 10 knots, or about 11 miles per hour, as designated observers watch for sea life. The company has used other systems to minimize damage, too. When the monopiles are driven into the seabed, the company installs perforated tubes around the area to pump jacuzzi-like bubbles that dampen the sound.

Despite all the obstacles and delays, however, the Virginia project could well emerge unscathed from all this scrutiny. It has attributes that Empire Wind lacked that give it a clearer path to success. For one, the owner is an American company. And Dominion’s utility bills are paid by American consumers, who would likely be on the hook for some costs should the project fail, according to analyst Zimbardo. Most other major U.S. projects—including Empire—are owned at least in part by European firms, which have deals to sell the power to utilities. Trump has made disdainful comments about “foreign offshore wind companies” impinging on American fishing spots.

The Dominion project has another advantage. While the construction budget sounds hefty at an estimated $10.8 billion, it’s actually one of the less-expensive offshore wind projects being constructed today and it still compares well with other sources of generation. Unlike some other offshore wind developments, it got started before inflation caused equipment prices to rise. Dominion says its levelized cost of energy, a metric meant to assess costs over the lifetime of the project, is $62 per megawatt-hour—competitive with other electricity-generation sources like coal. The Dominion project’s cost benefits may insulate it from Trump’s contention that these projects are too expensive.

The Dominion project is also further along than Empire Wind, which hadn’t yet installed any monopiles. Dominion says it is more than halfway done and will be sending power to the electric grid by next year. It’s expected to have 178 wind turbines providing 2.6 gigawatts of power, or enough for 660,000 homes. On a recent trip to the offshore wind site, there were several signs of progress. The monopiles had been topped with yellow transition pieces that stick more than 50 feet out of the water. They’re designed as a kind of sheath to hold the turbines in place. The project’s first electric substation had been completed, a 4,300-ton electric hub perched on stilts in the middle of the water. It will bundle the power from the turbines, adjust the voltage, and send it to the shore. Nearby are two 600-foot pilot turbines that were installed in 2020 and already produce power for Dominion. Each time their contoured blades make a revolution, it provides enough power for one home for a day, the company says.

Opponents complain that these projects “industrialize the ocean.” Wind turbine construction is undoubtedly disruptive to marine life—metal is being pounded into the seabed. But the fish don’t seem to mind the structures once they’re in the ground. Marine habitats have begun to form around the turbines. Fishermen come to the site to drop lines in the water because species like black sea bass and flounder like to swim around the structures, according to John Larson, director of public policy and economic development at Dominion. Mussels cling to the foundations, and more fearsome creatures stop by, too. Larson showed off a photo of a 14-foot great white shark circling the steel.

There’s no evidence yet that construction is a significant factor hurting animals like the endangered North Atlantic right whale, as opponents contend. The two largest known causes of right whale deaths and serious injuries are entanglements in nets and collisions with vessels, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Offshore wind isn’t a known cause, the agency says.

And the ocean is already filled with industrial-size ships and other hazards—container ships regularly coast by, belching brown emissions. Perhaps the biggest hazard of all to ocean life is climate change. Among the animals that are most at risk are the whales that offshore wind opponents say they’re trying to save. “Whales are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change because these effects can be magnified toward the top of the food web,” according to NOAA.

Most major environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club back offshore wind because it’s a way to reduce the worst impacts of climate change. Failing to shift from coal and gas to cleaner electricity sources will only exacerbate the degradation. Climate change has already had substantial negative impacts on ocean health.

Offshore wind also has strong support from states led by Democrats. This month, 17 state attorneys general and Washington, D.C., sued the Trump administration over the wind permitting pause, saying the president doesn’t have the authority to stop the process. “This administration is devastating one of our nation’s fastest-growing sources of clean, reliable, and affordable energy,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement.

Northeastern states in particular are depending on offshore wind to help them decarbonize their electric grids, which now rely heavily on natural gas and other fossil fuels. Stopping these projects will make it much harder—perhaps impossible—for them to meet requirements of state climate laws. Trump has created an “existential threat” to wind energy, the lawsuit says.

In response, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said that the attorneys general were “using lawfare to stop the President’s popular energy agenda.”

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If Dominion does succeed in completing the project, it could be America’s first wind project of its size—and the last for a while. That’s a shame, says Roger Clayman, a director of a wind employment training center in New York who was on a recent tour of the Dominion project. Clayman was previously the executive director of the Long Island Federation of Labor, part of the AFL-CIO. America’s offshore wind labor force is just starting to get built up, he notes. “We had hoped there would be a series of projects” that could eventually employ thousands of union workers, he says.

The Dominion project was also expected to be the hub of a larger offshore wind supply chain that would generate even more jobs. This month, a Korean company broke ground on a $700 million wind cable factory in nearby Chesapeake, Va., that will be the tallest building in the state. And Dominion spent $715 million to build a specialized turbine-installation vessel at a Texas shipyard. If offshore wind is halted in the U.S., the burgeoning supply chain will quite literally float away.

Dominion’s precarious position points to a larger problem facing utilities. They need to quickly ramp up power production to generate enough electricity for artificial-intelligence data centers, electric vehicles, and other businesses. But funding shortfalls and political uncertainty make it harder than ever. It’s one reason why the U.S. can’t seem to build big projects like nuclear reactors anymore, despite politicians calling for a nuclear renaissance.

“Investors don’t like to see those projects because there are so many points of failure,” says Jefferies’ Zimbardo. “So many things can go wrong in permitting or construction” or because of regulation.

“If your utility is looking to invest a billion dollars, investors don’t want to see a billion-dollar project,” he added. “They want to see, like, 50 small projects.”

Zimbardo still thinks there’s a better-than-average chance this project gets completed. But the uncertainty puts Dominion and its investors in a tough position today. Next year, they’ll either debut a monumental first of its-kind project, or they’ll own an ocean graveyard—a shark-infested Stonehenge.

BArrons : Heart Disease Could Be a Goner When These New Drugs Arrive

Heart Disease Could Be a Goner When These New Drugs Arrive
Successful trial results in the next few years could save thousands of lives and generate billions in new annual revenue for drugmakers.

Forty years after the first statin drug started lowering levels of artery-choking cholesterol, heart attacks and strokes remain the world’s biggest killers. This year will see test results on some drugs that cut cholesterol even more.

Statins are cheap and effective drugs for reducing blood levels of the “bad” cholesterol known as LDL, which gunks up arteries over time. A quarter of Americans have high LDL. But only about half of patients stay on their prescribed statins, and the drugs don’t get LDL low enough in some 10% of patients.

A pack of new cardiovascular drugs are being tried as pills, biweekly or semiannual shots, and even as once-for-a-lifetime infusions. And their benefits all seem additive to those of statins and each other. Successful trial results in the next few years could save thousands of lives and generate billions in new annual revenue for drugmakers.

“Even with everything that we’ve done in the field, there is actually a fair amount of new things in the pipeline,” said researcher Steve Nissen, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic who conducts clinical trials on many of the new drugs.

Companies working on new cholesterol-lowering drugs range from pharmaceutical companies—like Eli Lilly, Merck, and AstraZeneca —to biotechs—like Amgen, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, and NewAmsterdam Pharma —to gene-editing specialists—like Crispr Therapeutics and Verve Therapeutics. As cash-consuming start-ups, the last three companies would benefit mightily from a successful cardio product.

LDL isn’t the only fatty vandal in circulation. High levels of triglycerides and something called lipoprotein(a) are also associated with cardiovascular disease, and many of the same companies are targeting them.

“My hope is that if we hit all these targets then we can stop this disease before it causes all the trouble that requires stenting and bypasses,” says Nissen.

Regeneron and Sanofi took the first big step beyond statins in 2015 with Praluent, a biweekly injection of antibodies that sop up the enzyme called PCSK9, which strongly affects blood levels of LDL. Amgen followed just weeks later, with the PCSK9 antibody Repatha. In 2021, Novartis launched Leqvio, which blocks the genetic instructions for making PCSK9 and can be injected just twice a year.

The PCSK9 drugs are lifesavers for families with genetically high LDL levels. But they require regular injections and can cost $30,000 a year for the rest of a patient’s life.

The cost and hassle has led to sales that are good, but not as great as expected. Regeneron and Sanofi’s Praluent sales were $585 million in 2024. For the same year, Amgen’s Repatha pulled in $2.2 billion, up 15% year over year. Last year’s sales of Leqvio for Novartis were $260 million, up 80%.

To address these drugs’ cost and convenience issues, Merck is testing a pill treatment that it code-named MK-0616. The company is betting the drug will help replace some of the revenue it will lose after patents expire on its huge-selling cancer drug, Keytruda.

On April 7, Merck finished the once-daily pill’s Phase 3 trial in about 300 people with inherited high-LDL cholesterol. In August, it expects to complete the broader study among some 2,800 patients with serious cardiovascular problems. Both studies measure reductions in LDL—which regulators accept as good-enough proof that cardiovascular problems will also be prevented. Analysts hope the company will report results at the November 2025 meeting of the American Heart Association.

Merck aims for a bigger market than just high-LDL families, so a third Phase 3 for MK-0616 will use the gold-standard test of whether those on the pill actually have fewer heart attacks, strokes, or other cardiovascular calamities. That study, which is enrolling over 14,000 people, won’t finish until 2029.

While Merck’s pill could find its way to a larger population than today’s PCSK9 injections, it still has some convenience issues. Patients have to take MK-0616 on an empty stomach and shouldn’t be on certain other drugs.

That’s why AstraZeneca is pushing ahead with its own PCSK9 pill, dubbed AZD0780, which requires no fasting. In March, the company said the pill achieved 50% reductions in LDL in a Phase 2 study on patients whose statin treatment wasn’t doing the job. AstraZeneca has said the annual market for a PCSK9 pill could exceed $5 billion.

The size of the cardio market and the current PCSK9 drugs’ issues have also caught the eye of the gene-editing industry. These companies’ Crispr technology can zero in on a particular, troublesome stretch in the 3 billion links of our DNA, and then permanently inactivate it, or make a repair.

So far, genetic-medicine firms have struggled to convince investors that there’s real money to be made from the Nobel Prize-winning technology. Companies like Crispr Therapeutics initially focused on dire, but somewhat uncommon diseases like sickle cell disorder. Revenue has been slow to come.

Verve Therapeutics, however, focused on cardiovascular disease from the start. It licensed a second-generation Crispr technology called base-editing, from the company Beam Therapeutics. Base-editing gently changes a single letter at a time in DNA genetic code. By permanently disrupting the code for PCSK9, Verve’s one-time treatment could lower LDL for life.

The stock perked up in April when the company reported initial Phase 1 data that showed no serious side effects among 14 patients—with LDL reductions of around 60% even two years after the one-time treatment. That reduction is comparable to today’s PCSK9 injectables. Eli Lilly has an option to partner on Verve’s cardio programs, and could opt in this year.

“Genetic therapy is frankly a game changer,” said Nissen. Instead of a lifetime of statins and PCSK9 treatments for a young person with inherited high cholesterol, a one-and-done DNA edit could knock out the troublesome gene altogether. To make sure that long-term side effects don’t turn up, the first gene-editing patients will be followed for 15 years.

Other genetic-medicine approaches to PCSK9 are exploring nonpermanent, but long-lasting fixes. The privately held Scribe Therapeutics has reported intriguing results in monkeys from “epigenetic” edits of the molecules that turn genes on and off.

And PCSK9 isn’t the only strong lever on cholesterol levels. Another that our body uses to control blood levels of cholesterol is a protein called CETP. Early in May, NewAmsterdam Pharma reported on a couple of Phase 3 trials of obicetrapib, its antibody that blocks CETP. By itself, the antibody cut LDL levels by a third. Combined with a statin, LDL levels fell by half.

Another lever on LDL is ANGPTL3, a protein controlling blood levels of LDL and harmful triglycerides. Since 2021, Regeneron has marketed Evkeeza, an antibody that inhibits ANGPTL3. Sales of the drug to patients with inherited high cholesterol were $126 million in 2024.

Lilly, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, and Regeneron are all testing so-called siRNA drugs, which degrade the RNA messages that tell cells to make ANGPTL3. They are injections that work for as long as a year at a time.

Verve began Phase 1 trials in November 2024 on a base-editing treatment that permanently disrupts the genetic instructions for ANGPTL3. It hopes to report some data later this year.

Crispr Therapeutics, meanwhile, is further along in trials of a one-and-done edit that blocks ANGPTL3. In April, it reported that LDL dropped by two-thirds, among the first 10 patients treated. No serious side effects surfaced in the first months after infusion.

For rare but deadly disorders, gene-editing fixes are priced above $1 million. The Crispr crowd thinks it can find a price that is attractive to the healthcare payers that cover the expensive siRNA injections now given to patients with inherited high levels of cholesterol.

“If you’re talking about siRNA, that is $30,000 a year for 50 years,” said Crispr Therapeutics Chief Executive Samarth Kulkarni at an April conference. “We could spend one-tenth of that and charge $150,000 for a single-shot therapy. For the payer, the economic argument is very clear.”

Besides LDL cholesterol, other fatty risk factors for heart attack and stroke are triglycerides and lipo(a).

The triglyceride inhibitor Tryngolza is one of the first wholly owned products for Ionis Pharmaceuticals, whose monthly injections bind to RNA messages that tell liver cells to make the fat. Tryngolza is approved for a rare inherited triglyceride disorder, where it reduced triglycerides 40% to 60%. A recent Phase 3 trial showed 60% reductions in patients with the more common problem of moderately high triglycerides.

Arrowhead’s siRNA drug plozasiran achieved a deeper reduction among patients with the rare inherited disorder, in a Phase 3 trial reported last year. Injected every three months, it cut triglycerides 80%.

There is no approved drug treatment for the roughly 65 million Americans whose genes leave them with high blood levels of lipoprotein(a), and an estimated two-to-three times higher risk of cardiovascular disease.

Next year, Novartis and Ionis will report the first Phase 3 trial that tests whether cutting lipo(a) levels indeed reduces heart attacks and strokes. Their monthly injectable, pelacarsen, cut lipo(a) levels nearly 80% in earlier trials.

Using the longer-acting siRNA technology, a single shot of Lilly’s lepodisiran cut lipo(a) by 94% for six months, in a recently reported Phase 2 trial. Amgen and Arrowhead achieved comparably deep drops with their siRNA olpasiran. These rival siRNA teams are now running Phase 3 studies to see if cardio outcomes benefit.

Drugs for lipo(a)’s inherited risks have been a long time coming, said Nissen. So he thinks the lipo(a) outcome studies under way hold out some of the most exciting prospects in heart medicine.

MIT News : New fuel cell could enable electric aviation

New fuel cell could enable electric aviation
These devices could pack three times as much energy per pound as today’s best EV batteries, offering a lightweight option for powering trucks, planes, or ships.

Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That’s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation systems.

Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell — which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity. The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.

In a series of experiments with a prototype device, the researchers demonstrated that this cell could carry more than three times as much energy per unit of weight as the lithium-ion batteries used in virtually all electric vehicles today. Their findings are being published today in the journal Joule, in a paper by MIT doctoral students Karen Sugano, Sunil Mair, and Saahir Ganti-Agrawal; professor of materials science and engineering Yet-Ming Chiang; and five others.

“We expect people to think that this is a totally crazy idea,” says Chiang, who is the Kyocera Professor of Ceramics. “If they didn’t, I’d be a bit disappointed because if people don’t think something is totally crazy at first, it probably isn’t going to be that revolutionary.”

And this technology does appear to have the potential to be quite revolutionary, he suggests. In particular, for aviation, where weight is especially crucial, such an improvement in energy density could be the breakthrough that finally makes electrically powered flight practical at significant scale.

“The threshold that you really need for realistic electric aviation is about 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram,” Chiang says. Today’s electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries top out at about 300 watt-hours per kilogram — nowhere near what’s needed. Even at 1,000 watt-hours per kilogram, he says, that wouldn’t be enough to enable transcontinental or trans-Atlantic flights.

That’s still beyond reach for any known battery chemistry, but Chiang says that getting to 1,000 watts per kilogram would be an enabling technology for regional electric aviation, which accounts for about 80 percent of domestic flights and 30 percent of the emissions from aviation.

The technology could be an enabler for other sectors as well, including marine and rail transportation. “They all require very high energy density, and they all require low cost,” he says. “And that’s what attracted us to sodium metal.”

A great deal of research has gone into developing lithium-air or sodium-air batteries over the last three decades, but it has been hard to make them fully rechargeable. “People have been aware of the energy density you could get with metal-air batteries for a very long time, and it’s been hugely attractive, but it’s just never been realized in practice,” Chiang says.

By using the same basic electrochemical concept, only making it a fuel cell instead of a battery, the researchers were able to get the advantages of the high energy density in a practical form. Unlike a battery, whose materials are assembled once and sealed in a container, with a fuel cell the energy-carrying materials go in and out.

The team produced two different versions of a lab-scale prototype of the system. In one, called an H cell, two vertical glass tubes are connected by a tube across the middle, which contains a solid ceramic electrolyte material and a porous air electrode. Liquid sodium metal fills the tube on one side, and air flows through the other, providing the oxygen for the electrochemical reaction at the center, which ends up gradually consuming the sodium fuel. The other prototype uses a horizontal design, with a tray of the electrolyte material holding the liquid sodium fuel. The porous air electrode, which facilitates the reaction, is affixed to the bottom of the tray.

Tests using an air stream with a carefully controlled humidity level produced a level of more than 1,500 watt-hours per kilogram at the level of an individual “stack,” which would translate to over 1,000 watt-hours at the full system level, Chiang says.

The researchers envision that to use this system in an aircraft, fuel packs containing stacks of cells, like racks of food trays in a cafeteria, would be inserted into the fuel cells; the sodium metal inside these packs gets chemically transformed as it provides the power. A stream of its chemical byproduct is given off, and in the case of aircraft this would be emitted out the back, not unlike the exhaust from a jet engine.

But there’s a very big difference: There would be no carbon dioxide emissions. Instead the emissions, consisting of sodium oxide, would actually soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This compound would quickly combine with moisture in the air to make sodium hydroxide — a material commonly used as a drain cleaner — which readily combines with carbon dioxide to form a solid material, sodium carbonate, which in turn forms sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda.

“There’s this natural cascade of reactions that happens when you start with sodium metal,” Chiang says. “It’s all spontaneous. We don’t have to do anything to make it happen, we just have to fly the airplane.”

As an added benefit, if the final product, the sodium bicarbonate, ends up in the ocean, it could help to de-acidify the water, countering another of the damaging effects of greenhouse gases.

Using sodium hydroxide to capture carbon dioxide has been proposed as a way of mitigating carbon emissions, but on its own, it’s not an economic solution because the compound is too expensive. “But here, it’s a byproduct,” Chiang explains, so it’s essentially free, producing environmental benefits at no cost.

Importantly, the new fuel cell is inherently safer than many other batteries, he says. Sodium metal is extremely reactive and must be well-protected. As with lithium batteries, sodium can spontaneously ignite if exposed to moisture. “Whenever you have a very high energy density battery, safety is always a concern, because if there’s a rupture of the membrane that separates the two reactants, you can have a runaway reaction,” Chiang says. But in this fuel cell, one side is just air, “which is dilute and limited. So you don’t have two concentrated reactants right next to each other. If you’re pushing for really, really high energy density, you’d rather have a fuel cell than a battery for safety reasons.”

While the device so far exists only as a small, single-cell prototype, Chiang says the system should be quite straightforward to scale up to practical sizes for commercialization. Members of the research team have already formed a company, Propel Aero, to develop the technology. The company is currently housed in MIT’s startup incubator, The Engine.

Producing enough sodium metal to enable widespread, full-scale global implementation of this technology should be practical, since the material has been produced at large scale before. When leaded gasoline was the norm, before it was phased out, sodium metal was used to make the tetraethyl lead used as an additive, and it was being produced in the U.S. at a capacity of 200,000 tons a year. “It reminds us that sodium metal was once produced at large scale and safely handled and distributed around the U.S.,” Chiang says.

What’s more, sodium primarily originates from sodium chloride, or salt, so it is abundant, widely distributed around the world, and easily extracted, unlike lithium and other materials used in today’s EV batteries.

The system they envisage would use a refillable cartridge, which would be filled with liquid sodium metal and sealed. When it’s depleted, it would be returned to a refilling station and loaded with fresh sodium. Sodium melts at 98 degrees Celsius, just below the boiling point of water, so it is easy to heat to the melting point to refuel the cartridges.

Initially, the plan is to produce a brick-sized fuel cell that can deliver about 1,000 watt-hours of energy, enough to power a large drone, in order to prove the concept in a practical form that could be used for agriculture, for example. The team hopes to have such a demonstration ready within the next year.

Sugano, who conducted much of the experimental work as part of her doctoral thesis and will now work at the startup, says that a key insight was the importance of moisture in the process. As she tested the device with pure oxygen, and then with air, she found that the amount of humidity in the air was crucial to making the electrochemical reaction efficient. The humid air resulted in the sodium producing its discharge products in liquid rather than solid form, making it much easier for these to be removed by the flow of air through the system. “The key was that we can form this liquid discharge product and remove it easily, as opposed to the solid discharge that would form in dry conditions,” she says.

Ganti-Agrawal notes that the team drew from a variety of different engineering subfields. For example, there has been much research on high-temperature sodium, but none with a system with controlled humidity. “We’re pulling from fuel cell research in terms of designing our electrode, we’re pulling from older high-temperature battery research as well as some nascent sodium-air battery research, and kind of mushing it together,” which led to the “the big bump in performance” the team has achieved, he says.

The research team also included Alden Friesen, an MIT summer intern who attends Desert Mountain High School in Scottsdale, Arizona; Kailash Raman and William Woodford of Form Energy in Somerville, Massachusetts; Shashank Sripad of And Battery Aero in California, and Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan of the University of Michigan. The work was supported by ARPA-E, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and the National Science Foundation, and used facilities at MIT.nano.

Barrons : Miners Scramble to Move Into Copper. 2 Stocks to Consider.

Miners Scramble to Move Into Copper. 2 Stocks to Consider.

This should be a great time to be a mining company. The global transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy will drive copper demand up by half, nickel more than twice, and lithium 11 times from 2020 to 2040, the International Energy Agency predicts.

Markets apparently missed the memo. Shares in the two industry giants, BHP Group and Rio Tinto, are both down by a quarter from peaks in early 2023. Total returns look better thanks to hefty dividends but are still negative. The surprise resignation of Rio Tinto CEO Jakob Stausholm, announced May 22, isn’t a bullish sign.

Part of the sector’s problem is cyclical: The stocks went on an irrationally exuberant tear coming out of the pandemic. Part is structural, too.

Most of BHP and Rio Tinto’s cash flow comes from iron ore, says James Whiteside, head of metals and mining corporate research at consultant Wood Mackenzie. Iron ore prices have fallen by 20% in the past 18 months as the biggest buyers, Chinese steel makers, get smacked by their country’s ongoing real estate depression.

“Companies have to find replacements for the iron ore bonanza of the past 20 years,” echoes Jon Mills, mining equities analyst at Morningstar. “It’s a difficult job.”

The Big Two and everyone else are scrambling to switch into copper, whose price has jumped 30% over the same period.

That takes time, lots of it. Mining has devised no equivalent to the shale drilling that allows oil and gas producers to react to markets in months rather than decades.

Production costs for copper have tripled since 2010, Whiteside estimates, as old reliable orebodies like BHP’s Escondida in Chile mature and new prospects are “more remote, harder to develop or water-starved.”

The industry is too Balkanized to meet green transition demand, adds George Cheveley, a portfolio manager at asset manager Ninety One. “BHP and Rio are the only ones big enough to pursue a $10 billion greenfield on their own,” he says. “Everyone else would risk the company on a single project.”

A raft of mergers have been pursued or rumored in recent years: BHP with Anglo American, Rio Tinto with Glencore.

Few have materialized. China’s state-owned Zijin Mining Group is a competitor on offense, targeting a 50% rise in copper output from 2023-28 as it expands recent acquisitions from the Democratic Republic of Congo to Serbia.

Nothing illustrates the perils of bold moves in mining better than Stausholm’s march into lithium at the helm of Rio Tinto. The firm sank nearly $10 billion into the essential metal for EV and energy storage batteries, while the price plunged 90% from a 2022 peak.

Stausholm may be proved right in the long run, investors think. “The time you want to buy into a metal is when everybody hates it,” Morningstar’s Mills says. Rio Tinto is “trading at a relatively large discount to our valuation,” Woodmac’s Whiteside adds. Nevertheless, Stausholm will soon be out of a job.


Mining stocks can turn very hot when they get on the right side of the supply-demand equation. BHP quadrupled in total return terms over five years following a trough in 2016. The world needs them to succeed going forward, dimly as that may be understood by the ESG crowd.

“If nothing happens, copper prices will go nuts,” Cheveley notes, taking prices for greener vehicles and power grids with them.

The ride for investors looks bumpy, though.

Barrons : Buy Viking Stock on the Dip. Affluent Travelers Keep Coming Back.

Buy Viking Stock on the Dip. Affluent Travelers Keep Coming Back.
The cruise operator’s stock recently took a hit after cautious management earnings commentary and investor jitters, but it’s well positioned to correct course.


“The sea has never been friendly to man,” wrote sailor-cum-author Joseph Conrad. That has often been true of cruise stocks, as well, but Viking Holdings looks like an exception.

Viking has had a choppy couple of weeks. Shares of the Viking Cruise owner—famous for its river voyages—sold off despite a better-than-expected first quarter, as investors fretted that bookings could be slowing in the face of economic uncertainty. The shares took another hit after the company announced a secondary offering—just over a year after its initial public offering. At a time of trade uncertainty, stock market volatility, and recession worries, that has made some investors queasy, particularly given the industry’s reputation for being cyclical.

Yet far from being a good time to jump ship, the selloff seems like a buying opportunity.

“Viking is our favorite of all the cruise companies….It has far and away the best-in-class balance sheet, return on invested capital, and capacity expansion,” says Jodi Love, portfolio manager of the T. Rowe Price Small-Mid Cap exchange-traded fund—factors that she argues will drive industry-best profitability growth over the next three to five years. “Viking is well positioned to win within the cruise industry and the broader travel market” because it caters to a very affluent and extremely loyal customer base that books directly with the company, she notes.

Much of that was on display in its recent upbeat earnings, but due to the unsettled macro backdrop, investors were hoping for more clarity and reassurance. Instead, management’s tone was cautious, implying that the rate of bookings may have slowed.

Nonetheless, there were also encouraging numbers—92% of 2025 and more than 35% of 2026 capacity was already sold after Viking wrapped up a record “wave season” (the cruise industry’s crucial first-quarter booking period). Likewise, pricing remains strong for cruises in general, and particularly for Viking’s more upscale sailings.

“We love companies that are riding the silver tsunami” of baby boomer spending, says Mike Smith, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments. “This is a very affluent demographic that makes up 25% of the population but owns half the wealth…and they are still spending.”

Given that the stock is up more than 80% since its IPO, it isn’t surprising that it would pull back on conservative management commentary. Yet consensus estimates still call for best-in-industry growth, with earnings per share climbing more than 30%, to $2.42, this year and nearly 26%, to $3.06, in 2026. That’s a faster clip than its three main peers— Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, and Royal Caribbean Group—in either year. At 14.5 times next year’s earnings, the stock seems attractively priced.

It’s trading roughly on par with Royal Caribbean but “could grow 50% to 100% faster on a percentage basis,” says Lance Cannon, partner and research analyst at Hood River Capital Management. “If anything, you could argue one of these two is mispriced, and I think that is Viking. It should command a premium.”

That’s because the company’s expertise in providing immersive experiences with an English-speaking crew is second to none—and it’s expanding beyond the European river cruises on which it built its reputation. Viking sailings now include ocean voyages and visit all seven continents.

Cannon says that earnings estimates could wind up being conservative, as pricing remains strong across the cruise industry and Viking boasts a wealthy base of repeat customers. Vacationers who sail with Viking try other cruise companies “but come back every time,” he notes, and that while wealth destruction from stock market gyrations is always a worry, “the vast majority of these people aren’t going from riches to rags,” thanks to diversified investments.

The average analyst price target of more than $51 for the stock implies 15% upside from Thursday’s close of $44.34.

As for the secondary offering announced this week, that doesn’t seem cause for concern, either, in light of the longstanding pattern of more shares coming up for grabs after a stock debuts. “You can almost set your watch to the timing of some of these,” says Allspring’s Smith.

None of the concerns about Viking look like deal breakers, given its high repeat customer rate, solid cash position, and fleet of new ships coming on-line in coming years. T. Rowe’s Love argues that Viking would probably hold up best among the major cruise companies in a downturn because of these factors and its differentiated product.

In fact, the company’s ability to execute well during times of economic feast or famine is what makes Cannon confident about Viking. “The companies that continue to grow in the industry regardless of macro tend to be long-term winners, and Viking has the opportunity to be one,” he says.

It should be smooth sailing ahead for Viking customers and investors alike.

>>> Weekly Market Update: Tariffs challenged in US courts; Earnings season winds

Stocks surged coming out of the long Memorial Day weekend after President Trump noted he liked what he has heard from EU officials over the weekend so much that he was delaying the 50% tariff implementation he introduced last Friday. Outside of several high profile tech earnings reports, trade related headlines would dominate investor focus throughout the remainder of the week, but markets for the most part remained subdued in their response. The S&P ran up towards 6K after the US Court of International Trade blocked Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs only to see those tariffs temporarily reinstated by an Appeals court hours later. The case appears headed to the Supreme Court, but regardless the Administration argued they have multiple levers to pull if the ultimate outcome doesn’t go the President’s way. The Treasury Secretary and others emphasized nothing has changed in regards to ongoing trade negations with several deals still likely to be announced soon. On the other hand, Bessent also revealed talks with China have stalled. The President vented his frustration in another pointed Truth Social post on Friday, calling out the Chinese for violating the handshake agreement reached in Switzerland earlier this month that resulted in both sides bringing down tariffs.

A retreat in global bond yields certainly helped overall sentiment this week after Japanese officials mused about pulling back on long dated JGB issuance. US Treasury offerings were well received throughout the week as well. May PCE inflation data continued to move in the right direction. Richmond Fed data also showed modest improvement along with various sentiment readings. Crude oil prices moved down into an OPEC+ meeting this weekend where producers could agree on hiking output by more than the 411K bpd/month trajectory they have been on. The US 10-year yield finished near the lows of the week backing away from 4.5%. The VIX moved back up towards 20 on Friday, spurred by the resurgent US/China trade war escalation. For the week, the S&P gained 1.9%, the DJIA rose 1.6%, and the Nasdaq was up 2%.

Some big tech and retail earnings rounded out the Q1 earnings season, with some surprising results (and some not so surprising). Nvidia announced it had to eat an $8B loss on H20 chips due to the White House’s export control limitations, but still managed to handily beat analyst expectations, ex-items. Nvidia CEO Huang suggested US policy on exports was playing into the hands of China by weakening the influence of US tech firms, but noted that global demand for its AI infrastructure products remains incredibly strong with years of backlogs. Meanwhile PC and printer maker HP Inc fell short of expectations, citing macro uncertainties for a top and bottom line miss and a guidance cut. Among retailers, Macy’s had a solid quarter but cut its outlook on tariff concerns, also noting some moderation in consumer discretionary spending, though recent weeks have shown some improvement. Youth cloth Abercrombie & Fitch also lamented tariff impacts, but the already beaten down stock surged on better than expected Q1 results, thanks largely to its Hollister brand delivering 22% net sales growth. Another retailer, Gap, beat expectations and reported 2% same store sales growth, but shares were priced for perfection and slid 20% as management merely affirmed fiscal year guidance. Outside of earnings, US chip designers Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems were hit hard by a new Trump Administration order restricting sales into the China market. In deal news, Informatica confirmed an $8B deal to be acquired by Salesforce, and e.l.f. Beauty shares got a big boost after agreeing to pay up to $1B for Hailey Biebers ‘rhode’ brand.
MON 05-26
(CA) Bank of Canada (BOC) Gov Macklem: The extent of pass-through of tariffs to consumer prices, the speed of it — there is some uncertainty around that - NYT interview (update)
(CN) MOODY'S AFFIRMS CHINA'S A1/A+ RATINGS; KEEPS OUTLOOK NEGATIVE
(CN) CHINA PRES XI REPORTEDLY MULLS NEW MADE-IN-CHINA PLAN TO BOOST PRODUCTION OF HIGH-END TECH GOODS DESPITE US CALL TO REBALANCE – PRESS
(IT) Moody's affirmed Italy sovereign rating at Baa3 (one notch above junk); Outlook revised to Positive from Stable (update from May 23rd)
(TW) China reportedly increased its ability to launch a sudden attack on Taiwan with faster-paced air and operations, new artillery systems and more alert amphibious and air assault units, according to Taiwanese and US officials and experts - FT (update)
(US) PRES TRUMP: AGREES TO DELAY 50% TARIFF THREAT AGAINST EU TO JULY 9TH (PRIOR DEADLINE JUNE 1ST) - TRUTH SOCIAL POST [**Note: July 9th is original date of expiration of 90-days reciprocal tariff pause]
1211.HK Recent notable weakness in Chinese EV names being attributed to BYD cutting prices on 22 models with discounts up to 34% until the end of June

TUES 05-27
(FR) FRANCE MAY PRELIMINARY CPI M/M: -0.1% V +0.1%E; Y/Y: 0.7% V 0.9%E (lowest since Feb 2021)
(IN) India June rainfall seen above average at 108% of average – press
(IN) Fox's Gasparino: After being delayed because of the India-Pakistan tensions, the trade framework with India and White House is said to be almost complete, my sources say. Remaining issues seem to be around Apple and its ability to move plants there from China as opposed to all of them in US. Unclear if any of this will derail an announcement in the coming days (update)
(JP) Japan MOF to hold meeting with JGB primary dealers on June 20th; MOF could consider 'trimming' issuance of super-long JGBs – Nikkei
(JP) JAPAN SELLS ¥500B VS. ¥500B INDICATED IN 40-YEAR JGB BONDS; YIELD AT LOWEST ACCEPTED PRICE: 3.1350% V 2.7100% PRIOR; BID-TO-COVER: 2.21X V 2.92X PRIOR (weakest demand ratio since July 2024)
(NZ) NEW ZEALAND CENTRAL BANK (RBNZ) CUTS OFFICIAL CASH RATE (OCR) BY 25BPS TO 3.25%; AS EXPECTED; 1 dissenter voted to keep rates unchanged
(US) Fox's Gasparino: One issue the market isn’t digesting: Any adverse ruling against the Trump tariffs by the US Court of International Trade, which this week could rule on the legality of the trade agenda and at least put a hold on them until SCOTUS rules
(US) APR PRELIMINARY DURABLE GOODS ORDERS: -6.3% V -7.8%E; DURABLES (EX TRANSPORTATION): 0.2% V 0.0%E
(US) Atlanta Fed GDPNow: Lowers Q2 GDP estimate from 2.4% to 2.2%
(US) MAY CONSUMER CONFIDENCE: 98.0 V 87.1E
(US) MAY DALLAS FED MANUFACTURING ACTIVITY: -15.3 V -23.1E
(US) TRUFLATION PROXY OF US AGGREGATED INFLATION INDEX TICKS HIGHER AGAIN TO 2.1% (HIGHEST SINCE MID-FEB) V 1.4% BEFORE LIBERATION DAY
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Issues Joint Statement with Argentina Health Minister following joint statement regarding each country’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO)
(US) Reportedly more US businesses with manufacturing operations on the mainland are warning they will be forced to raise prices in the coming weeks as inventories dwindle and shipping costs surge – Nikkei
INFA Confirms to be acquired by Salesforce at $25/shr in cash-debt; The transaction is not expected to disrupt Salesforce’s capital return program; Expects to achieve accretion on a non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP earnings per share, and free cash flow basis starting in the second year following the expected closing
PDD Reports Q1 $1.56 v $2.49e, Rev $13.2B v $14.2Be; Notes a slowdown in growth rate is expected as its business scales and challenges emerge
TTN Research Alert: "First Sale" Resurgence: The Corporate Response to Record-High U.S. Tariffs With Firms Trying to Outsmart Rising Duties

WEDS 05-28
(CN) Pres Trump said to order US chip designers to cease China sales – FT
(CN) Reportedly China's MOFCOM announcement on the export control policy of rare earths may indicate potential relaxation of exports to European chip companies - Chinese press
(DE) GERMANY MAY UNEMPLOYMENT CHANGE: +34.0K V +12.0KE (above all estimates); CLAIMS RATE: 6.3% V 6.3%E
(EU) ECB Apr Consumer Expectation Survey: 1-year ahead CPI Expectations: 3.1% v 2.8%e
(EU) EU said to formulate plan to work with private investors to introduce privately managed help startup/scaleup fund for Europe - press
(EU) WEF founder Klaus Schwab: ECB's head Lagarde discussed leaving ECB early to head WEF – FT
(RU) Reportedly Russia Pres Putin's conditions for ending the war in Ukraine include a demand that Western leaders pledge in writing to stop enlarging NATO eastwards and lift a chunk of sanctions on Russia - press citing sources
(IR) US White House memo: Can do 'significant reduction' of Iranian petroleum - press cites US Federal Register
(KR) BANK OF KOREA (BOK) CUTS 7-DAY REPO RATE BY 25BPS TO 2.50%; AS EXPECTED
(US) Barclays analysts: U.S. Retail inventory risk on the horizon; Demand has been stable but the risk is ahead, as retail prices are starting to increase, with more expected in June/July, potentially leading to demand destruction; inventory dollars growing faster than sales dollars; Expect sales-to-inventory spreads to worsen starting in Q2 2025 as we focus on dollar inventory growth not units, with 4Q25 to bear the worst of the demand/supply imbalance
(US) US (Manhattan-based) Court of International Trade has blocked and declared illegal Pres Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs made under the IEEPA and imposed a nationwide injunction - US press
(US) FOMC APR MINUTES: PARTICIPANTS SAW UNCERTAINTY ABOUT ECONOMIC OUTLOOKS AS UNUSUALLY ELEVATED; PARTICIPANTS NOTED THAT DURABLE SHIFT IN THOSE CORRELATIONS OR A DIMINUTION OF PERCEIVED SAFE-HAVEN STATUS OF US ASSETS MAY HAVE LASTING IMPLICATIONS FOR ECONOMY
(US) MAY RICHMOND FED MANUFACTURING INDEX: -9 V -9E
(US) US to pause exports of jet engine technology and chip software to China; Also includes certain chemicals; Comes in response to China’s mineral restrictions - NYT
(US) TREASURY $70B 5-YEAR NOTE AUCTION DRAWS 4.071% V 3.995% PRIOR, BTC 2.39 V 2.41 PRIOR AND 2.39 OVER THE LAST 12
A Reports Q2 $1.31 v $1.26e, Rev $1.67B v $1.63Be
ANF Reports Q1 $1.59 v $1.36e, Rev $1.10B v $1.06Be; Cuts profit guidance, excludes other currently-paused tariffs
ANTHROPIC.IPO CEO Amodei: AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years - Axios interview
CRM Reports Q1 $2.58 v $2.54e, Rev $9.80B v $9.75Be; Raises guidance
DKS Reports Q1 $3.37 v $3.34e, Rev $3.17B v $3.12Be; Affirms outlook
HPQ Reports Q2 $0.71 v $0.80e, Rev $13.2B v $13.4Be; Cuts guidance due to macroeconomic uncertainty; Guides Q3 well below consensus
INTU TTN Summary of 11:30ET Jefferies Public Technology Conference: Hours worked by employees are flat y/y; Maintaining a 15–20% durable growth trajectory for assisted tax, planning to build on breakthrough learnings (local ads, timing tweaks, high 80s NPS) throughout upcoming seasons.
HUAWEI.CN Reportedly planning to build a chip chemical company capable of rivaling global leaders, in a radical attempt to develop a fully self-sufficient domestic semiconductor supply chain - Nikkei (update)
M Guides Q2 $0.15-0.20 v $0.32e, Rev $4.65-4.75B v $4.72Be; Affirms FY25 Capex $800M v $882M y/y (prior: $800M) - earnings slides
M TTN Summary of 08:00ET Earnings Call: Momentum built in March and has continued quarter-to-date, pointing to improving comp trends in upcoming weeks; Pricing is working its way into the system slowly—with little to no pricing in Q1 and limited pricing so far in Q2
NVDA Reports Q1 $0.96* (adj ex-items) v $0.85e, Rev $44.1B v $42.7Be
NVDA TTN Summary of 17:00ET Earnings Call: Evaluating limited options to supply data center compute products under new US export controls; lost access to China’s AI accelerator market forecast to grow to $50B could materially benefit competitors.
MRNA HHS terminates $766M in awards for late-stage development of pre-pandemic influenza vaccines (avian flu vaccine) indicating project does not meet scientific or safety expectations for continued investment.; Phase 1/2 H5 avian flu vaccine study showed positive interim results and will explore alternatives for late-stage development and manufacturing of the H5 program
PYPL TTN Summary of 09:00ET Bernstein 41st Annual Strategic Decisions Conference 2025: We are seeing very consistent spending trends from what we've reported on over the last couple of quarters; Medium-term branded checkout growth of 8–10%; long-term targets of 10%+ transaction margin dollar growth and 20%+ EPS growth, with a >$2 billion Venmo revenue goal by 2027
Tier1 analysts after call with world's leading container shipping expert Huajoo Tan of Linerlytica: US-China deal has driven a rapid restoration of container shipping sailings with ships now sailing full; Has seen an inflection in transpacific trade since the US-China deal which is expected to drive transpacific spot rates higher in June; Sees a sequential demand uptick likely in June-July 2025 on an early peak and ramping Chinese exports
VOLCARB.SE Exec: Pauses Volvo Cars facility in South Carolina, US, due to a supply chain issue related to a hardware component
VOLCARB.SE Exec: Pauses Volvo Cars facility in South Carolina, US, due to a supply chain issue related to a hardware component VOLCARB.SE Exec: Pauses Volvo Cars facility in South Carolina, US, due to a supply chain issue related to a hardware component
VWAGY Reportedly VW, BMW, and Mercedes in talks with Trump administration on tariffs; Targeting a deal by the start of July; Companies working with US on mechanism offset imports and imports - German press

THRS 05-29
(CN) China Commerce Ministry (MOFCOM): Reiterates US to stop 'wrongdoing' on tariffs; US and China maintained communications since Geneva meeting; China talked to US over chip export control recently
(DE) Germany said to consider 10% digital tax on big tech companies - FT
(EU) WEF and Davos founder Klaus Schwab launches criminal complaint against his accusers – FT
(JP) JAPAN MAY TOKYO CPI Y/Y: 3.4% V 3.4%E; CPI (EX-FRESH FOOD) Y/Y: 3.6% V 3.5%E (highest since Jan 2023)
(RU) Russia Foreign Ministry: Russia, as part of its peace proposals, wants legally binding mechanisms to guarantee that the Ukraine conflict will not resume
(US) APR PENDING HOME SALES M/M: -6.3% V -1.0%E; Y/Y: -3.5% V 2.7%E
(US) BOFA INSTITUTE: WEEK-TO-MAY 24TH TOTAL CARD SPENDING +0.2% V +1.0% ON AVERAGE IN APRIL; Initial read suggests that we could be getting a softer Memorial Day spending weekend this year likely due to colder weather.
(US) Fed’s Daly (non-voter for 2025): Really making progress on inflation but will not get to 2% inflation this year; Workers are worried about inflation; I see a general sense of cautious optimism
(US) Fed's Goolsbee (voter): If tariffs are avoided by a deal or otherwise, could return to situation where rates can come down - comm (US) Redfin: There are 33.7% more homesellers than homebuyers v just 6.5% delta y/y v two years ago, buyers outnumbered sellers; At no other point in records dating back to 2013 have sellers outnumbered buyers by this large of a number or percentage ents at forum
(US) Q1 PRELIMINARY GDP ANNUALIZED Q/Q: -0.2% V -0.3%E; PERSONAL CONSUMPTION: 1.2% V 1.7%E
(US) TREASURY $44B 7-YEAR NOTE AUCTION RESULTS: DRAWS 4.194% V 4.123% PRIOR, BID-TO-COVER RATIO: 2.69 V 2.55 PRIOR AND 2.61 OVER THE LAST 12
(US) APPEALS COURT REINSTATES TRUMP TARIFFS UPON APPEAL, TEMPORARILY HALTING LAST NIGHT'S US COURT OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE DECISION
(US) House introduces a bipartisan digital asset regulation bill
(US) House Speaker Johnson: House will codify cuts made by Dept of Govt Efficiency (DOGE); Oversight by DOGE will become permanent in govt - Fox News
(US) White House NEC Dir Hassett: Appeals court ruling on tariffs this afternoon gives us time to finish our trade deals - Fox News interview
(US) White House NEC Dir Hassett: Judges' decision on US tariffs will be overturned; Confident in success of appeal of tariff ruling; Three trade deals are basically done - Fox Business
(US) Fed Chair Powell met with Pres Trump today at White House; They discussed growth, employment and inflation; Didn't discuss expectations for monetary policy - Fed statement
(US) White House Press Sec Leavitt: Pres Trump told Fed Chair Powell he's making a mistake in not lowering interest rates
(ZA) SOUTH AFRICA CENTRAL BANK (SARB) CUTS INTEREST RATES BY 25BPS TO 7.25%; AS EXPECTED (corrected)
BA TTN Summary of 10:00ET Bernstein 41st Annual Strategic Decisions Conference 2025 CEO Ortberg: Confirms 'very quickly' approaching 737 Max output of 38/month; Want to hit 47/month by end of year
BOWL.UK Reports H1 EPS 12.0p v 13.6p y/y, Adj EBITDA £38.8M v £38.6M y/y, Rev £129.2M v £119.2M y/y; Notes driest spring in over a century; Continue to expect full-year EBITDA to fall within the range of current analyst forecasts
COST Reports Q3 $4.28 v $4.25e, Rev $63.2B v $63.1Be
FL Reports final Q1 -$0.07 v -$0.05e, Rev $1.79B v $1.83Be
GAP Reports Q1 $0.51 v $0.44e, Rev $3.46B v $3.42Be
KSS Reports Q1 -$0.13 v -$0.22e, Rev $3.23B v $3.18Be
LMND Co-Founder: In under 48 hours, 100% of the Lemonade engineering team had switched to agentic coding.
MRVL Reports Q1 $0.62 v $0.61e, Rev $1.90B v $1.88Be
SMR US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approves Nuscale's 77 megawatt small nuclear reactor design
ZS Reports Q3 $0.84 v $0.75e, Rev $678M v $666Me

FRI 05-30
(CN) US-China trade truce said to risk breaking down over access to rare earths - WSJ
(CN) US said planning wider sanctions on Chinese tech companies with inclusion of Chinese subsidiaries - press
(JP) Japan Econ Min Akazawa met with US Treasury Sec Bessent and Commerce Sec Lutnick 'strongly requested' US to rethink its tariff measures; Made progress in trade talks and agreed to accelerate talks - Japan govt statement
OPEC+ may discuss production hike this weekend that's larger than the ~411K bpd [size of increase that's been recently cited] – press
(US) APR PCE PRICE INDEX M/M: 0.1% V 0.1%E; Y/Y: 2.1% V 2.2%E; Core PCE Price Index M/M: 0.1% v 0.1%e; Y/Y: 2.5% v 2.5%e
(US) APR PERSONAL INCOME: 0.8% V 0.3%E; PERSONAL SPENDING: 0.2% V 0.2%E
(DE) GERMANY MAY PRELIMINARY CPI M/M: 0.1% V 0.1%E; Y/Y: 2.1% V 2.1%E
(ES) SPAIN MAY PRELIMINARY CPI M/M: 0.0% V 0.1%E; Y/Y: 1.9% V 2.1%E
(CA) CANADA MAR GDP M/M: 0.1% V 0.1%E; Y/Y: 2.2% V 1.6%E
(US) Atlanta Fed GDPNow: Raises Q2 GDP estimate from 2.2% to 3.8%
(US) Association of American Railroads weekly rail traffic report for week ending May 24th: 488.7K total units, +0.7% y/y
(EU) ECB reportedly to plan on-site probes for banks over private market exposures – press
(US) Dept of Interior implements emergency permitting to accelerate geothermal energy development
2330.TW Said to consider building an advanced chip plant in UAE; Has discussed the possible fab with Trump administration - press

TechCrunch : Gemini will now automatically summarize your long emails unless you

Gemini will now automatically summarize your long emails unless you opt out

Google’s AI assistant, Gemini, is gaining a more prominent place in your inbox with the launch of email summary cards, which will appear at the top of your emails. The company announced Thursday that users no longer have to tap an option to summarize an email with AI. Instead, the AI will now automatically summarize the content when needed, without requiring user interaction.

When Gemini launched in the side panel of Gmail last year, one of the features allowed users to summarize their long email threads, along with other tools like those to draft email messages or see suggested responses, among other things.

Now, Google is putting the AI to work on your inbox, whether or not it’s something you want to use.

The update is another example of how AI is quickly infiltrating the software and services people use the most, even though AI summaries aren’t always reliable. When Apple rolled out AI summaries for app push notifications, for example, the BBC found the feature made repeated mistakes when summarizing news headlines. Apple ended up pausing the AI summaries for news apps.

Google’s own AI Overviews feature for Search has also repeatedly made mistakes, offering poor quality and inaccurate information at times.

With the new email summary cards, Gemini will list a longer email’s key points and will then continue to update that synopsis as replies arrive.


The feature won’t replace the option to manually click a button to summarize an email, Google notes. That will still appear as a chip at the top of the email and in Gmail’s Gemini side panel.

The feature is initially available only for emails in English.

Depending on your region, the summary cards may be turned on or off by default. (For instance, smart features are turned off in the EU, the U.K., Switzerland, and Japan, Google’s help documentation notes.) Others can choose to enable or disable the feature from Gmail’s Settings under “Smart features.” Workplace admins can also opt to disable the personalization settings for users from the Admin console.