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This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how financial disclosures for President Donald Trump showed hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of transactions involving securities in major American companies including Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 1.33% ) , Palantir $PLTR ( ▲ 0.86% ) , Paramount $PSKY ( ▼ 0.71% ) , and Boeing $BA ( ▲ 0.05% ) in the first three months of 2026. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Let’s cut to the news chase…

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Why a jury sided against Musk with OpenAI

• Two energy giants combine to create a behemoth

• More investors are seeking losses for tax reasons

• Why AI is the villain of graduation speeches

• Bad news? The world is simply awash in bourbon

• Poll of the day: Ai, Ai, Ai…

• Poll of the day: It’s a conflict of interest

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.07% ) $DJI ( ▲ 0.32% ) $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$OPENAI ( 0.0% )  $NEE ( ▼ 4.63% )  $D ( ▲ 9.44% )  $BLK ( ▲ 0.37% )  $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.04% )  

Why a jury sided against Musk with OpenAI

A federal jury took less than two hours to unanimously toss out Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman yesterday. The primary reason the jury sided against Musk was a basic technicality: He brought his claims after the statute of limitations had already expired.

Musk’s team tried to allege that Altman manipulated him and "stole a charity." His lawyer, Steven Molo, swung for the fences, dramatically declaring of Altman, "Five witnesses in this trial called him a liar under oath."

However, OpenAI's lawyers completely dismantled Musk's narrative. They argued that Musk not only knew about the plan to convert to a for-profit structure, but that he actually supported it and tried to take control of the venture himself. According to OpenAI, Musk only pursued the lawsuit because his power grab was rejected, prompting him to leave and start a rival company.

OpenAI attorney William Savitt delivered the ultimate mic-drop regarding Musk's motivations, noting, "To succeed in AI, it turns out, all Mr. Musk can do is come to court." In the end, the jury saw right through the sour grapes, dismissing the case and clearing the way for OpenAI's IPO this summer.

Quote of the Day

Two energy giants combine to create a behemoth

With AI driving unprecedented electricity needs, NextEra Energy $NEE ( ▼ 4.63% ) and Dominion Energy $D ( ▲ 9.44% ) have agreed to a colossal merger. The all-stock agreement aims to create a massive $420 billion U.S. utility behemoth with a customer base of over 10 million homes and businesses stretching from Florida to Virginia.

The primary driving force behind this megadeal? Thirsty AI data centers. Dominion currently serves as the main power supplier for northern Virginia's "data center alley," the heartland of U.S. AI infrastructure that handles roughly two-thirds of global internet traffic. NextEra CEO John Ketchum highlighted the necessity of the tie-up, noting it is happening at "a historic moment" when "electricity demand is rising faster than it has in decades." Because of this technological surge, Ketchum stressed that "scale matters more than ever.”

However, the path to finalizing the transaction won't be simple. The mega-merger faces strict regulatory scrutiny from state authorities, especially regarding the potential impact on everyday consumers. Dominion Energy is literally digging up my front lawn as I type this, and I wouldn’t describe the contractors as exactly sorry for the inconvenience.

David Pomerantz, executive director of the watchdog group Energy and Policy Institute, voiced serious concerns. He warned the Financial Times, "If regulators approve this merger, it will lead to higher electric bills for customers in Virginia and South Carolina."

Although how our electricity bill could possibly get higher than it is already, I have no idea.

More investors are seeking losses for tax reasons

The stock market is booming, but wealthy investors are increasingly obsessed with finding ways to lose money—on paper, at least. Welcome to the hottest trade on Wall Street: Advanced tax-loss harvesting.

Traditionally, investors relied on "direct indexing," where a manager buys a basket of stocks to track an index and then sells off the declining ones to offset capital gains taxes. However, this relentless bull market has made finding losers incredibly difficult. Jon Diorio, head of U.S. wealth product at BlackRock $BLK ( ▲ 0.37% ) , told the Wall Street Journal that about half of these direct-indexing portfolios industrywide are now "ossified," meaning they are "no longer generating losses."

To keep the tax breaks flowing, financial advisers are turning to "long-short tax-aware" strategies. Now there’s about $392 billion in assets under this kind of management, according to the reporting.

This approach uses leverage, borrowing against the initial investment to create both long and short positions. By betting against certain stocks while going long on others, managers amplify returns while creating vastly more opportunities to harvest tax losses. However, these sophisticated accounts come with hefty fees and some wealth managers remain highly skeptical of the trend. Michael Paulus, founder of advisory firm PCM Encore, generally prefers direct indexing due to its lower costs and avoids the newer long-short strategies. As he bluntly puts it, "All else being equal, I’d probably rather cut the government a check than a hedge fund in Connecticut.”

Of course, if you’re really seeking to lose money on some investments, then I’ve got a series of absolutely great ideas for you…just give me a call, yeah? Let’s talk!

Song of the Day: bbno$, ‘Round and Round’

"Round and Round" blends 8-bit synths with a pop-rock beat, exploring modern success culture and the repetitive nature of fame. Although the artist is from Vancouver, so obviously he’s skeptical of success. #Canada

Why AI is the villain of graduation speeches

Graduations are supposed to be filled with hope, but this year, bringing up AI has been an easy way for speakers to get heavily booed by anxious crowds. When real estate executive Gloria Caulfield called AI the "next industrial revolution" at the University of Central Florida, the audience's loud backlash left her stunned, asking, "What happened?"

Former Google $GOOGL ( ▲ 0.04% ) CEO Eric Schmidt faced the same music at the University of Arizona. As boos rained down, Schmidt conceded, "I know what many of you are feeling about that. I can hear you.”

The fear of vanishing jobs isn't just paranoia. Billionaire Ken “don’t tax my New York pied-a-terre” Griffin recently noted that AI is automating tasks that once took teams of Ph.D.s months to complete. "These are not mid-tier white collar jobs," Griffin warned. "These are extraordinarily high-skilled jobs." He even admitted he went home "actually fairly depressed by this.”

Although I’d be amazed if Ken Griffin is capable of feeling depressed for too long.

Beyond the job market, AI is already damaging the learning process. Stanford senior Theo Baker told the New York Times that generative AI makes cheating omnipresent, writing, "Relying on AI for cognitive tasks can reduce one’s own intellectual capacity and resilience.”

For recent grads, AI feels less like a helpful tool and more like an existential threat. For the rest of us? Well. I mean. We’re old. Right?

Bad news? The world is simply awash in bourbon

Kentucky is sitting on an unprecedented 16.1 million barrels of aging bourbon, a massive reserve large enough to last the industry up to 10 years. After heavily expanding their capacity during the pandemic cocktail boom, distillers are now facing a severe, er…hangover.

Thanks to inflation, the rise of "sober-curious" lifestyles, GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, and the availability of cannabis, consumer demand has suddenly dried up. The oversupply is so extreme that Jim Beam has paused its main still—which previously churned out a barrel every 93 seconds—until at least 2027.

The fallout is rippling across the entire supply chain. Brad Boswell, CEO of a major barrel provider, bluntly warned the Wall Street Journal, "If you got into this barrel business thinking you have never-ending growth and it’s a seller’s market, you’re gonna be very disappointed." 

Craft distillers are also feeling the pinch, with Michael Myers of Distillery 291 telling the Journal that due to inflation, "People didn’t have as much cash to spend on things.”

Or, at least, cash to spend on bourbon. For legacy brands, navigating the historic glut is difficult. Jim Beam master distiller Freddie Noe admitted the production scale-backs are "very emotional," noting, "We’ve had very critical conversations and we’ve made decisions for the long-term success of our family’s products."

Still, he remains resilient about the future, insisting, "We are not shutting down."

Somebody fix him a drink?

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Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

No.

Poll of the day: Ai, Ai, Ai…

Poll of the day: It’s a conflict of interest

We asked: “Even with blind, third-party accounts, does a portfolio of the President's scope, nature, and scale represent an unavoidable conflict of interest?”

You answered:

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No. (40)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ It's purely a coincidence that an independent trust would make seven transactions involving Boeing right around the time a U.S. special envoy is publicly advising foreign entities, "If you want to make the President happy, buy Boeing." (15)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ When top executives from Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Visa, Citi, and Qualcomm accompany the President to Beijing, it's just an "honor" to ask Xi Jinping to let them "work their magic." (14)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Just because his accounts traded Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery while their $110 billion merger sits in the hands of U.S. regulators doesn't mean a thing. (6)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ The U.S. government taking a nearly 10 percent direct ownership stake in Intel last year clearly has nothing to do with his accounts miraculously executing six trades on the chipmaker while its share price soared more than 200 percent. (12)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ We must simply accept that an incredibly lucky, "fully discretionary" third-party institution is independently guessing exactly which companies the administration will boost. (45)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes. (431)
563 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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