00:00 Speaker A
Well, let’s start with Alphabet. Google’s parent company has just hit a big milestone. It’s now worth more than three trillion dollars.
00:08 Speaker A
Shares are up in pre-market after surging 4 and a half percent yesterday, helping Alphabet join Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft in the very exclusive club of companies that can boast a three trillion dollar market cap.
00:20 Speaker A
Google is up more than 44% in three months.
00:25 Speaker A
What’s driving Google’s rise? On top of positive earnings fueled by cloud growth and a strong ad sales momentum, Alphabet is now benefiting from regulatory relief as recent court decisions knocked back some scenarios that would have forced Google’s breakup.
00:39 Speaker A
Separately, FYI, there’s a big headline for Google here in the UK, as the company announced it would invest five billion dollars in the country over the next two years, focused heavily on AI infrastructure and a new data center near London.
00:54 Speaker A
The announcement comes just ahead of President Trump’s arrival for a state visit. He’s slated to land in London tonight.
01:02 Speaker A
Second ticker up is Webtoon and the stock is jumping about 48% in the pre-market after a major tie-up with Disney was announced.
01:10 Speaker A
Disney is investing in Webtoon and the two companies will build a new digital comics platform, bringing together Disney’s 35,000 plus comic titles, Marvel, Star Wars, you name it, under one subscription on Webtoon’s new platform.
01:25 Speaker A
Disney will take a 2% stake in Webtoon, which now faces the challenges of scaling up to deliver on this ambitious project.
01:35 Speaker A
And next up, the New York Times is in the news this morning. Shares of NYT fell more than 2% in pre-market trading, then now recovered slightly.
01:43 Speaker A
This is after President Donald Trump filed a $15 billion defamation and libel lawsuit against the paper and the publishing house Penguin, claiming multiple articles and a recent book misrepresented him and damaged his reputation.
01:57 Speaker A
Investors and the whole media industry are watching closely as this is becoming a pattern. Trump also sued the Wall Street Journal and CBS’s 60 minutes earlier this year, and has repeatedly accused mainstream outlets of lying about him.
02:08 Speaker A
And finally, there’s another asset that’s making the headlines, gold. It’s hit another record and is now trading above the 3,700 threshold.
02:18 Speaker A
So, we’ll be keeping a close eye on it to see where it goes from here with potential impact on the gold trade from the Fed decision tomorrow.
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