This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how solar-powered robots can now cut your lawn. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately, thank goodness!)

Now, news!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• Stock Market Gains in August

• Tim Cook’s Spectacular Financial Legacy at Apple

• LIV Golf Preps for Bankruptcy Filing

• Song of the Day: Interpol, ‘Wings on Fire’

• Trump Admin Eyes New Path to Lower Health Costs

• The Huge Hedge Fund Divorce Raising Eyebrows

• Poll of the Day: Prenuptual Agreements

• Poll of the Day: Cuttin’ Up? Not So Much…

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.33% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.7% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$MRNA ( ▲ 1.7% ) $PLTR ( ▲ 0.05% ) $CRM ( ▲ 0.6% )  $PSKY ( ▲ 0.28% )  $WBD ( ▼ 0.83% )  $WRKD ( 0.0% )  $AAPL ( ▼ 0.89% )  

Stock Market Gains in August

Yes, markets started the week in the red after fresh firing in the war in Iran. But August has been rather a good month for stock markets generally, with the S&P 500 up 2.5%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 1.4% and the Nasdaq composite index up 3.7%.

The crown jewel? Moderna $MRNA ( ▲ 1.7% ), which skyrocketed 152% month-to-date after an experimental mRNA melanoma vaccine showed actual promise.

Other stocks saw remarkable rises: Palantir Technologies $PLTR ( ▲ 0.05% ) climbed 43% after a blowout Q2 earnings report. Salesforce $CRM ( ▲ 0.6% ) surged 39% after crushing Q2 earnings. Paramount Skydance $PSKY ( ▲ 0.28% ) rallied on strong direct-to-consumer growth and its pending merger with Warner Bros $WBD ( ▼ 0.83% ) . Workday $WRKD ( 0.0% ) also gained 47% over the month, boosted by better-than-expected subscription revenue and disclosure that its agentic AI annual recurring revenue is nearing $600 million.

Bad news for those of us storing our cash under the bed, I guess.

Quote of the Day

Tim Cook’s Spectacular Financial Legacy at Apple

Tim Cook is officially preparing to hand over the reins of Apple $AAPL ( ▼ 0.89% ) after 15 glorious, spreadsheet-optimized years. As he transitions to executive chair, he is floating upward on a golden cloud of unadulterated shareholder returns. Let’s look at the numbers of the man who dared to replace Steve Jobs’ romantic design idealism with cold, hard supply-chain logistics, shall we?

How do you step into shoes that managing partner Gene Munster called “impossible to fill”? Simple: You stop worrying about inventing the next world-altering product category and focus on extracting cash from the billions of devices already out there. Cook's real legacy is turning Apple's hardware into a tollbooth, milking 1.5 billion paying subscribers for iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple Pay.

The strategy worked. Under Cook, Apple’s stock surged more than 2,000%, ballooning into a $4 trillion market value that commands nearly 7% of the entire S&P 500. Along the way, Cook returned well over $1 trillion to shareholders and pocketed $880 million in personal pay, racking up a cozy $3 billion net worth while owning just 0.02% of the company.

Sure, the Apple Car was shelved in 2024 and the Vision Pro remains a very expensive, niche toy. But Cook did ship 3.1 billion iPhones — which, if lined up end-to-end, would comfortably reach from Earth to the Moon. Under his watch, profit margins also climbed close to 50% because Apple dumped third-party silicon.

Of course, the master of logistics tied Apple inextricably to China, leading Munster to quip, “Cook has not been the CEO of a company. He’s been the CEO of a country.” Sometimes that country wobbled — like when Trump’s global tariffs vaporized $638 billion in market value in just three days.

His successor, John Ternus, inherits a fumbled AI launch and $19 billion in EU antitrust penalties. But hey, Tim did his job, if you think his job was to make a fat pile of cash. If you thought it was to invent the next iPhone, well. Too bad.

Good luck, John!

LIV Golf Preps for Bankruptcy Filing

It turns out that throwing billions of dollars at guys in polo shirts to hit tiny white balls into the grass is not, in fact, a sustainable business model. At least, not for Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), which has decided it is finally done being golf’s bottomless ATM: LIV Golf is prepped for an imminent bankruptcy filing in New Jersey.

Yes, the league that promised to disrupt the stuffy PGA Tour is now trying to slip into a debtor-friendly federal court to shed its massive liabilities. As one insider involved in the discussions dryly observed, “PIF wants a clean baton toss.” Of course, "clean" is a relative term when you’re sending settlement offers to players, who were promised millions in guaranteed payouts past 2026, offering them just a few cents on the dollar.

Players now face three depressing choices: Take the pocket change and join a vastly slimmed-down, 10-tournament "LIV 2.0;" take the pocket change and retire; or "fight it out" as unsecured creditors in bankruptcy court. Meanwhile, LIV CEO Scott O’Neil is complaining, “We shouldn’t live in a world where one group of golfers is uniquely restricted from playing elsewhere.”

That’s what you get when you compete with the PGA, Scott!

LIV managed to generate a staggering $5 billion in net operating losses, and in the beautiful, cynical world of corporate finance, those losses are a potential treasure trove for sheltering future taxable income. It’s actually possible that LIV Golf’s greatest legacy won’t be the loud music or short-format play, but serving as a multi-billion-dollar tax write-off for an oligarch willing to take on the company. Watch this space…

Song of the Day: Interpol, ‘Wings on Fire’

"Wings on Fire" is widely considered a critical centerpiece track from Interpol’s eighth studio album, This Mirror Weighs a Ton, which was released last week. Pitchfork praised the track as a "twitchy, paranoid rocker" that ranks among the best offerings from the band's late-career discography. So, it’s a lot like this newsletter.

Trump Admin Eyes New Path to Lower Health Costs

If you are one of the United States' 11.9 million independent contractors, congratulations! You have achieved the true American dream: Being your own boss, setting your own hours, and paying 100% of your own eye-watering health insurance premiums. Ever since the enhanced Obamacare subsidies expired, solo operators have watched their premium payments jump an average of 58%.

Enter the Trump administration, which is once again trying to rescue the self-employed from the clutches of high costs by simply rewriting the dictionary. The Labor Department is preparing to expand Association Health Plans (AHPs) by changing the legal definition of the word “employer.”

If this sounds familiar, that’s because they tried this exact same thing in 2018. However, a federal judge struck it down in 2019 for, well, let’s say, "stretching" the English language.

Still, trade groups are absolutely thrilled. Shannon McGahn of the National Association of Realtors — where 14% of members are uninsured — enthused that self-employed professionals “deserve the same health coverage choices that employees and union members already have,” especially since solo operators face “double-digit premium increases and high out-of-pocket costs.”

The secret sauce? AHPs get to play by large-group rules, allowing them to sidestep certain ACA protections. As Justin Giovannelli explained to CNBC, an AHP “has to follow some of the same rules that apply to individual coverage, but not all of the same ones.” Like, say, the pesky rule that prevents charging a 64-year-old three times more than a 21-year-old.

Ah, health insurance in America. It just fills me with joy every time I think about it.

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The Huge Hedge Fund Divorce Raising Eyebrows

If you think your domestic budget disputes are stressful, spare a thought for John Overdeck, the mathematical genius and co-founder of quant-trading giant Two Sigma. His blockbuster divorce trial from his estranged wife, Laura, is currently dragging Wall Street’s jaw-dropping, eye-watering wealth into the glaring New Jersey courtroom light.

The math is simple, yet tragic. Despite meeting at D.E. Shaw & Co. in the 1990s — arguably the birthplace of hyper-rational quantitative finance — the Princeton- and Wharton-educated couple made the ultimate risk-management blunder: They didn't sign a prenuptial agreement. Recalling their 2001 romance, John testified from the stand, “I was in love... and I was very optimistic about our ability to build a future together.”

Now, that optimism is likely to cost him roughly $2 billion. John has generously offered a "meager" $723 million to settle. Laura, however, is doing her own calculations, demanding 35% of his estimated $6.2 billion Two Sigma stake.

The trial is a goldmine of elite, high-society drama. Laura was barred from testifying after allegedly obtaining confidential emails from John’s computer. Then there’s the viral 2023 police bodycam footage where John defended another woman showing up at their home, claiming they were dating “but we’ve never had sex,” only for Laura to arrive on the scene and counter that she had “hotel receipts.”

Meanwhile, John grumbled on the stand that his wife “was able to withdraw $75 million the day before she filed for divorce.” 

Then again, who among us hasn't made a casual $75 million ATM run before splitting?

Naturally, Two Sigma’s PR team is sweating. The firm frantically assured investors, “We recognize that recent media attention has extended to John Overdeck’s divorce trial.… This is a personal matter and we are not a party to those proceedings.” Totally personal. Except for the part where any shift in ownership could completely upend the firm's already toxic, executive-firing founder feud.

I’m sure it’ll all be fine. Meantime it makes for fun reading.

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

Nope.

Poll of the Day: Prenuptual Agreements

Poll of the Day: Cuttin’ Up? Not So Much…

We asked: Would you pay $500 for a solar-powered robot lawnmower to cut your grass?

You answered:

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 Absolutely. If it means I never have to make awkward small talk with my neighbor while sweating through my shirt at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, I’d pay $500 today and tip the machine $50. (115)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Absolutely not. I've seen enough sci-fi movies to know that a spinning blade of death charged by the wrath of the sun will eventually gain sentience and establish a perimeter around my driveway. (117)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Living where it rains 250 days a year means I'd just be paying $500 for a futuristic, solar-powered garden gnome that sits in the mud and watches my weeds reach chest height. (18)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, strictly to unleash it on the hallway carpet at 3 a.m. to assert total dominance over the HOA and my landlord. (I don't have a yard!) (21)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ My children already mow my lawn in exchange for room and board. I'm not about to give up that dominance, thanks. (65)
336 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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