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And now, news!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• ‘The Odyssey’ Opens Big at the Box Office

• Wall Street Steadies After Last Week's Losses

• Chinese AI Is Catching up With Claude

• Yippee! Gas Is Four Bucks a Gallon Again!

• Coffee Drinkers Take Revolutionary Step: Beans

• Poll of the Day: Just Curious on This One…

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.57% )  $DJI ( ▲ 0.51% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$AMC ( ▼ 5.49% )  $CMCSA ( ▼ 0.23% )  $NVDA ( ▲ 1.19% )  $SNDK ( ▲ 9.21% )  $AMD ( ▲ 5.95% )  $MSFT ( ▼ 0.33% ) $GOOGL ( ▼ 1.13% )  $AMC ( ▼ 5.49% )  $DPZ ( ▲ 1.13% )  

‘The Odyssey’ Opens Big at the Box Office

Hollywood spent 20 years telling us that only characters in spandex (or wizards and ice queens) can sell movie tickets. But Christopher Nolan just looked at a 3,000-year-old poem by a dead Greek guy and said, "Hold my IMAX camera.”

Did you go? I did. I thought it was fine. Like, nothing amazing, but I’m glad I went. I might go again this week and see it in IMAX, too!

Yes, The Odyssey sailed into theaters and conquered the domestic box office with a casual $124.5 million opening weekend. Global receipts of $264.1 million put the film on track to break even at around $625 million including its $250 million production and $125 million marketing budgets, even if it still has a way to go.

It turns out that if you hire half of Hollywood, including Matt Damon, Zendaya, and Tom Holland, and film the whole thing on a custom-designed giant camera, people will actually show up. You don’t even need to make the women characters as interesting as they are in the book, but what’s new there, Hollywood, huh? 💅🏽

People will even show up for IMAX screenings at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., and 6 a.m.. Some AMC $AMC ( ▼ 5.49% ) locations literally ran the movie for over 85 straight hours from Thursday through Sunday to keep up with the sleep-deprived hordes. IMAX Chief Executive Rich Gelfond was doing backflips, boasting, “Nolan used IMAX technology in a way no one ever has to create something no one has ever seen.” 

Box office consultant David A. Gross told the New York Times, “Christopher Nolan is the only filmmaker working today who could take an ancient story like this, attract a cast as sprawling and accomplished as this, and make it a pop culture event.”

So, congratulations to Universal $CMCSA ( ▼ 0.23% ) . It’s nice to know that Greek mythology is almost as bankable as Toy Story 5 (which grossed $40 million more at $160 million in its opening weekend domestically and $312 million globally, or about $55 million more worldwide). Stupid cartoons.

Quote of the Day

Wall Street Steadies After Last Week's Losses

Following a bruising week that shook investor confidence, Wall Street found its footing yesterday. The welcome stabilization was driven by a rebound in the high-flying AI and semiconductor sectors that bore the brunt of last week’s sharp sell-off.

Tech titan Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 1.19% ) led the charge, to ease market anxiety after its Friday drop served as the S&P 500's heaviest weight. Joining the rally, flash-memory maker Sandisk $SNDK ( ▲ 9.21% ) jumped to recover some ground after a painful 29% plunge last week. Meanwhile, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) $AMD ( ▲ 5.95% ) surged on news of an expanded partnership with Microsoft $MSFT ( ▼ 0.33% ) , which plans to use AMD's new Helios products for its AI infrastructure starting in the second half of this year.

Investors are also holding their breath for upcoming earnings from Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▼ 1.13% ) , which is scheduled to report on Wednesday and offer a crucial update on corporate AI spending. Shares in the firm rose on Monday after reports that Google is developing a new generation of AI chips designed to deliver more computing power while using less energy. This massive infrastructure boom has already sparked a gold rush for investment banks. But tech wasn't the only winner; AMC Entertainment $AMC ( ▼ 5.49% ) leaped after posting stronger-than-expected revenue, and consumer staple Domino’s Pizza $DPZ ( ▲ 1.13% ) also rose on robust growth in delivery and carryout orders.

With Brent crude hovering around $88.17 a barrel and the 10-year Treasury yield climbing to 4.58%, Wall Street remains steady, but wary, to start the week.

Chinese AI Is Catching up With Claude

Just when California's tech titans thought they had a permanent monopoly on digital wizardry, Beijing-based startup Moonshot dropped its new Kimi K3 model. Run by a Pink Floyd-loving, Carnegie Mellon-educated entrepreneur, Yang Zhilin, K3 is now breathing directly down the necks of Anthropic’s $ANTHZZX ( ▼ 0.17% ) Claude and OpenAI’s $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.65% ) ChatGPT. We can only assume the developers listened to The Dark Side of the Moon while building it.

It writes code better than some of the highly paid software engineers currently renting $4,000-a-month studio apartments in San Francisco. Even better? It’s half as expensive to use as OpenAI's high-performing model. Naturally, the U.S. giants are handling this with their usual grace. Anthropic has accused Chinese startups of engaging in campaigns to “illicitly extract Claude’s capabilities to improve their own models” via distillation.

But over at Carnegie Mellon, Moonshot's CEO has fans in high places. His former advisor Russ Salakhutdinov cheered, “What a huge win for the open-source community! It feels like just yesterday Zhilin was graduating from my lab at CMU.”

If you work in Public Relations for the university, congratulations, you may take the rest of the week off…

Song of the Day: Mike Posner, ‘Peach’

If you need a mental break, “Peach” is your perfect soundtrack. The vocal pairing of Mike Posner and Alec Benjamin feels like a late-night conversation between close friends. It rejects modern chaos and urges you to unplug, watch the sunrise, and find peace in simple moments like “eating a peach.” Fair enough. I can appreciate the sentiment.

Yippee! Gas Is Four Bucks a Gallon Again!

Just when you thought it was safe to plan a summer road trip without liquidating your savings, reality has intervened. Yes, gas is back to a national average of $4 a gallon.

Only recently, the White House was eagerly celebrating a temporary dip in consumer prices. President Donald Trump even stood in the Oval Office and proudly told reporters, “Prices are coming way down, and we’re doing a great job. And remember that for the midterms.”

Voters will almost certainly remember, sadly. But not quite in the way he’s hoping for. Following a very brief respite, the U.S. and Iran have resumed launching strikes, proving that escalating geopolitical conflicts are the ultimate catalyst for pump-induced panic.

With a naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz choking off shipping and Brent crude climbing back up, AAA is keeping everyone thoroughly grounded in despair by pointing out that the national average was a blissful $3.14 a gallon just a year ago. If you are a driver in California, you are likely weeping at $5.50 a gallon. Trump has previously expressed frustration that retail pump prices don't fall as quickly as crude oil does. Although now both are back to climbing, that’s sorta academic.

Coffee Drinkers Take Revolutionary Step: Beans

In a stunning scientific breakthrough, human beings have discovered that coffee actually comes from little brown beans. For decades, we have relied on corporate food scientists to pre-grind our coffee, pack it into plastic capsules, and charge us a premium. But with bad weather and weak harvests pushing commodity prices to record highs, home-consumption coffee prices have jumped another 6.3% this year. Faced with financial ruin, we are resorting to desperate measures, it seems.

Italian coffee giant Lavazza has identified a highly sophisticated new trend: Consumers are purchasing actual, intact whole beans and grinding them at home. Giuseppe “I Can’t Believe This Is His Real Name” Lavazza, chair of the family company, hailed this shift as the sector's “most important trend,” this week, explaining that “people are looking for beans and they enjoy maybe to replicate at home the experience of the coffee shop.” He added, “Maybe they prefer to consume a little less but better.”

This movement is sweeping the globe. In the year to May, whole-bean sales value exploded by 36.8% in the UK, 35% in France, 33% in Italy, and 31.2% in Germany. Even in the U.S., whole-bean unit sales rose 3.2% while pre-ground coffee declined 3.9%. Meanwhile, UK sales of fancy bean-to-cup machines jumped 33.5% as people realized they need a way to smash the beans they just bought.

If you are hoping for a price cut anytime soon, brace yourself. Mr. Lavazza warned, “We think there is not time to think about a possible cut in prices,” and noted that “the possibility of another increase of price lists is not totally over.”

It’s enough to give you the jitters.

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Still no, I’m afraid. One day. Maybe. I hope.

Poll of the Day: Just Curious on This One…

Poll Result of the Day: What a Trip…

We asked: Do You Plan to See 'The Odyssey' in a Movie Theater?

You answered:

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Plan to? I already saw it, mate. It came out on FRIDAY, loser. Get with the program! (24)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, I plan to see the film in a movie theater before it moves to streaming services. I am also a nice polite person capable of answering a simple question nicely. (111)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No. I concur with Time's reviewer, who wrote, "a movie still needs to add up to something you actually want to watch, not just a testament to a filmmaker’s solemn dedication to the hallowed tradition of filmmaking." (43)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Or: "We’ve reached a point where we get so few extravagant, ambitious studio movies that we’re expected to collapse with gratitude whenever we're presented with one. That’s not opening ourselves to what movies can be; it’s succumbing to a kind of ransom." (25)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Or: "No matter how endangered the movies become, we still get to choose what moves and delights us. Why settle for less? It’s our job to make demands. Otherwise, we’re nothing more than spoils of war." (28)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Wow, Time really hated the film, huh? (18)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 I mean sure, maybe? Who knows. Maybe? Like, I don't know why you're making such a big deal out of this, dude. It's just another movie. (178)

427 votes via @beehiiv polls

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