This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how a Silicon Valley start-up that released its first product just last week is drawing investment offers at a multibillion-dollar valuation, with promises that its AI tools are more efficient than OpenAI and Anthropic’s. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday (TODAY!) for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now? News!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• New Apple Boss Wants Products out Faster

• Porsche Boss Rules Out ‘Electric 911’

• U.S. Economy Grew More Than Expected in Q2

• Pilot Survives In-Air Stabbing Incident by Copilot

• Two Good New Books out This Week

• Treasury To Auto-Enroll 60 Million Kids in Trump A …

• Poll of the Day: Trump Accounts for Kids?

• Poll of the Day: Sn-AI-k Oil

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.25% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.86% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$AAPL ( ▲ 1.1% )  $VWAGY ( ▼ 1.37% )  $ADP ( ▼ 1.43% )  $TRIP ( ▼ 0.36% )  $HOOD ( ▼ 3.2% )  $BNY ( ▼ 1.6% )  

New Apple Boss Wants Products out Faster

If you thought Apple’s $AAPL ( ▲ 1.1% ) yearly September ritual of unveiling slightly shinier iPhones was set in stone, new CEO John Ternus is here to shatter the idea. The 25-year Apple veteran and former hardware chief, who succeeded Tim Cook this fall, is weighing a broad corporate overhaul to make the iPhone maker leaner and noticeably faster, according to reporters at the New York Post.

Citing "people familiar with the matter," the Post says Apple is considering moving away from its traditional spring and fall product-release cycle. Rather than waiting for carefully choreographed annual keynotes, Ternus signaled internally that Apple needs to "introduce products more quickly and become more experimental to remain competitive in the artificial intelligence era." 

Get ready for a chaotic future where new devices drop faster than your battery percentage on a cold day. To achieve this hyper-speed vision, Apple is slicing through its own corporate bureaucracy to build a leaner organization. The tech giant has already begun eliminating middle-management roles, including roughly half a dozen directors, to "narrow the gap between engineers and top executives." On top of that, Ternus is exploring how AI could "speed up product development and automate tasks currently performed by employees." 

With Apple having just entered the foldable market with its $1,999 Duo iPhone (so called because it costs two grand, and because you need two jobs to afford one LOL), abandoning rigid release schedules means new hardware could drop at any moment. I’m now holding my breath for the revolutionary $2,999 Trio iPhone as soon as December.

Quote of the Day

Porsche Boss Rules Out ‘Electric 911’

Porsche $VWAGY ( ▼ 1.37% ) CEO Michael Leiters has bad news for your eco-friendly track day fantasies. Since taking the, ahem, wheel in January, Leiters has been reining in the automaker’s “overambitious” EV strategy, drawing a firm line in the Stuttgart sand regarding the flagship sports car: “there won’t be a 911 electric,” he told the Financial Times.

Despite pivoting back toward combustion engines, and greenlighting a new petrol Macan for 2028 after electric Macan sales plunged 40%, Leiters insists he isn’t an EV villain. Pushing back against critics who label him a skeptic, he argues, “I think that’s unfair.” His goal isn't an electric extinction, but a “balanced offer” between gas and battery models, he insists.

With sales, ahem, stalling in China (enough with the car puns, Matt — Ed.) — where local rivals launch roughly two new cars a day in what Leiters called a “self-destroying” frenzy — Porsche is downsizing and eliminating 9,000 jobs. As Leiters put it, “we have to rethink our business model and the scale of our organization.” While Porsche will still release an electric 718, the legendary 911’s gas engine remains sacred. Leiters remains confident that on an “even playing field, we don’t have to fear any competition.”

U.S. Economy Grew More Than Expected in Q2

Just when naysayers have been preparing for economic winter, the U.S. Commerce Department dropped a surprise twist yesterday by revising second-quarter GDP growth up to a surprisingly healthy 2.2%, up from an initial modest estimate of 1.5%.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the sudden growth surge was powered by classic American habits, and that "the contributors to the increase in real GDP in the second quarter were consumer spending, investment, and exports." Apparently, despite steady inflation pressures and election-year jitters, the American consumer is simply refusing to stop spending money.

The surprisingly resilient economic momentum extends well beyond GDP figures and into the workplace. Celebrating a sharp September rebound in private-sector hiring, Nela Richardson, chief economist at payroll firm ADP $ADP ( ▼ 1.43% ) , also hailed a surprising labor recovery, telling Barron’s, "It's a strong report," and noting that "after a three-month slowdown, job creation rebounded and pay growth remained solid." 

U.S. private sector firms added 90,000 jobs in September compared to 38,000 in August, which represented the slowest monthly pace all year. This sudden flex of economic muscle brings its own set of complications for central bankers watching from the sidelines. With the Fed’s preferred inflation metric holding firm at 3.4%, economists warn that runaway growth could compel policymakers to keep interest rates elevated or even raise them further.

Matthew Martin, senior U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, told Barron’s that the labor strength "will bolster market expectations for firmer monetary policy from the Federal Reserve as it seeks to ensure inflation is tamped out."

Song of the Day: Madonna & Charlie XCX, ‘Danceteria Afterhours’

This track, which reworks the song "Danceteria" from Madonna's new hit album Confessions II, has been widely praised as a brilliant cross-generational meeting of two distinct club-culture eras. So, it’s just like this newsletter.

Pilot Survives In-Air Stabbing Incident by Copilot

And I thought driving the school run with my wife in the passenger seat could be occasionally contentious. A FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv went into a terrifying 14,000-foot plunge in under 30 seconds after an Omani co-pilot allegedly stabbed his captain right inside the cockpit on Tuesday.

Passengers surged forward, subdued the assailant, and took charge of the cabin. Social media clips recorded on board showed passengers standing guard directly outside the cockpit door. After an emergency landing at Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, the blood-soaked captain miraculously survived while authorities launched a terror investigation, with one official noting the attacker "tried to do a 9/11." One passenger casually informed his family in a selfie clip, "I need a change of clothes. Everything is drenched in blood... I gotta let my heart rate go down."

Not exactly the ideal review for TripAdvisor $TRIP ( ▼ 0.36% ) , is it?

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

Two Good New Books out This Week

Sylvester Stallone gave a barnstorming interview to The New York Times this past weekend about his bulimia, horrific childhood, and all the rest of it. It’s rocketed his new memoir, “The Steps,” up the bestseller list and I, for one, am curious to read it….

The late Lady Di’s brother, Charles Spencer, has also been doing a round of interviews with explosive allegations in his book “Swan Song” that King Charles sounded “giddily excited” on hearing of his late wife’s demise, and that he told him, “don’t worry, we’ll forget her soon enough.” Charles has denied the allegations, prompting Spencer to say he is being “gaslit by the king.” (Rubs hands with glee).

Treasury To Auto-Enroll 60 Million Kids in Trump Accounts

The Treasury Department will automatically enroll 60 million American minors into "Trump Accounts," bypassing the traditional requirement for parents or guardians to sign up manually. Managed via Robinhood $HOOD ( ▼ 3.2% ) and Bank of New York Mellon $BNY ( ▼ 1.6% ) , your toddler is now in the stock market before they can tie their shoes.

I don’t hate the idea. I enrolled my 5-year-old for a Trump account a few months ago and we just got $250 in free money from philanthropist Michael Dell for our trouble. The account tracks the S&P500 and is up 0.28% since we started. I like to throw in $25 every week or so just to feel good about things. The Treasury said the move is designed to ensure that everyone benefits.

Jin Huang, a professor of social policy at Washington University in St. Louis, told The Wall Street Journal, "This is the most important design change since the law passed.… This is huge."

There’s a catch for parents expecting a free $1,000 government seed payment: Auto-enrollment won't trigger that cash automatically. Taxpayers still have to specifically elect to receive it. Meanwhile, the new rules create a framework allowing wealthy donors to contribute appreciated stock directly into kids' accounts — dodging capital-gains taxes. But whatever. It’s not like they don’t have enough ways to do that already.

Critics are also sounding the alarm over dumping individual stocks into accounts meant to be low-risk index funds. Nina Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, told the WSJ: “It undermines the entire purpose of the regulated index fund requirement, which is stability." She added, "Let’s say someone donates a bunch of tech stocks and then we have another dot-com meltdown so that you end up with worthless stocks. How does that help the child?"

#LessonsInLife

Personally, my favorite thing about the accounts is the little gold piggy bank.

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

Still No. I Realize It’s Been a While.

Poll of the Day: Trump Accounts for Kids?

Poll of the Day: Sn-AI-k Oil

We asked: Will you buy stock in OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 1.48% ) and Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▼ 0.72% ) when they float?

You answered:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Sure. On the one hand they're both likely to kill us all. On the other, I could double my money in a few weeks. (32)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Only through my exposure to the index, which will rise and fall with them. I'm not going to buy shares at the float. (79)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I would rather buy stock in snake oil, honestly. I fear for America. (205)
316 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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