Your Daily Brief

August 9th, 2022


Good morning, and happy Tuesday! Today, we’re covering a sinkhole in Chile that keeps growing, a United States box office milestone, and more. Here’s what we have for you:

In Today’s Brief

  • Chile: Sinkhole that emerged on July 30th doubles in size
  • Mar-a-Lago: Former President Trump said the FBI raided his Florida home and broke into a safe
  • Top Gun: Maverick: Passes Titanic as the seventh-highest grossing film of all time at the US box office
  • Axios: Selling to Cox Enterprises for $525M six years after it was founded
  • Ezra Miller: Charged with felony burglary
  • Top Tips: Biden administration authorizes a new security assistance package for Ukraine; meme stocks rise in yesterday’s trading session; actress and singer Olivia Newton-John dies at 73

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President Biden authorizes additional weapons & aid package for Ukraine

The Biden administration announced a new security assistance package yesterday for Ukraine totaling $5.5B in military and budgetary aid.

According to a statement from the Department of Defense, the $1B military portion of the package includes additional ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (or HIMARS), 75,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition, 20 120 mm mortar systems, 20,000 rounds of 120 mm mortar ammunition, and munitions for National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (or NASAMS). It is the largest weapons installment from the United States since Russia invaded the country, and brings the Biden administration’s total commitments so far to about $9.8B.

Along with the military aid, the United States will also provide Ukraine with a $4.5B budgetary grant that will fund government needs like payments for pensions, social welfare, and healthcare costs. Both packages are drawn from a $40B total aid package for Ukraine that Congress approved in May.

Meme stocks begin making a comeback

Shares of Bed, Bath & Beyond, AMC Entertainment, and GameStop rallied yesterday, climbing as high as 63%, 14%, and 12% during trading hours, respectively. 

The three companies were labeled as “meme stocks” in late 2020 due to retail traders taking an interest after seeing their ticker symbols mentioned on online forums such as Reddit’s “Wallstreetbets.” The tickers would circulate on forums followed by retailer investors, who would then place buy orders for those symbols en masse. Demand rose for the stocks, which, in turn, would send their prices up. In the case of GameStop, the stock price rose by as much as 134% in one day on January 27th, 2021.

According to data from Ape Wisdom, which tracks mentions of tickers on the Wallstreetbets Reddit thread, mentions of Bed, Bath & Beyond, GameStop, and AMC rose from Sunday into Monday, with those three names receiving the most mentions at market open.

Olivia Newton-John dies at age 73

Singer and actress Olivia Newton-John died yesterday in Southern California at age 73, according to a statement from her husband.

Newton-John was born in England and moved to Australia at the age of 14 before going on to star in the 1978 movie musical Grease alongside John Travolta. In addition to acting, Newton-John sang the 1981 song "Physical," which, according to Billboard, was the number-one single of the 1980s. Over the course of her five-decade career, she is credited with selling more than 100 million records.

In a post on the singer’s verified Instagram account, Newton-John’s husband John Easterling said, "Olivia has been a symbol of triumphs and hope for over 30 years sharing her journey with breast cancer. Her healing inspiration and pioneering experience with plant medicine continues with the Olivia Newton-John Foundation Fund, dedicated to researching plant medicine and cancer.”

Around the Globe

  • China announced it will begin conducting new military drills around Taiwan that focus on anti-submarine and sea assault operations; the announcement comes one day after the scheduled end of drills in protest of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visiting the island last week
  • A sinkhole that emerged in Chile on July 30th has doubled in size and prompted officials to order work to stop at a nearby copper mine; the sinkhole now stretches 160 feet in diameter and 656 feet in depth
  • Hong Kong has cut its hotel quarantine requirements from seven to three days for people arriving from overseas before undergoing “medical surveillance” for an additional four days either at home or at any hotel

On the Homefront

  • Gregory and Travis McMichael, two of the three men convicted of killing Ahmaud Arbery in 2020, were both given life sentences for federal hate crimes; William “Roddie” Bryan, who recorded footage of the incident, was sentenced to 35 years in prison
  • Former President Donald Trump said that the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago estate and asserted that agents broke into a safe as part of an investigation into whether he took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence
  • Gabby Petito’s family has filed a $50M lawsuit against the Utah police department, accusing them of "negligent failure" in their investigation into an alleged assault between Petito and her fiancé Brian Laundrie prior to her murder

Glitz and Games

  • South Korean girl group Blackpink unveiled dates for their upcoming “Born Pink” world tour; the tour is set to launch in October of this year and will run through June 2023
  • Top Gun: Maverick has overtaken James Cameron’s Titanic as the seventh highest grossing movie of all time and the highest-grossing Paramount film at the United States box office with $662M in ticket sales
  • Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, author, and television host David McCullough passed away at the age of 89

Money Moves

  • Major indexes in the stock market ended relatively flat after ticking upward in early trading hours yesterday (Dow +0.09%, Nasdaq -0.10%, S&P 500 -0.12%)
  • Japanese investment bank SoftBank’s Vision Fund posted a loss of about $21.68B in the quarter ending in June; it is the second-largest quarterly loss on record for the Vision Fund
  • Digital media company Axios has agreed to sell itself to Cox Enterprises for a total of $525M in cash; the deal includes an additional new investment of $25M in Axios' media arm to help the company expand across its local, national, and subscription news products

Tips & Tricks

  • Binge Watch: Like pretty much everyone else in the country right now, we can’t peel our eyes away from The Sandman on Netflix
  • Bump This: benny blanco, BTS, and Snoop Dogg knocked it out of the park with the new bop “bad decisions” - listen on Apple Music and Spotify
  • Cash Grab: Check out this riverside penthouse that Hugh Jackman picked up in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood for $21.125 million (sometimes all you need is to get cast in a major superhero franchise) 
  • Go Deep: Learn why a group of researchers at Stockholm University and ETH Zurich have deemed rainwater not safe to drink anymore because it contains “forever chemicals” from consumer and industrial products...even in remote parts of the world 
  • Say What: “I didn’t feel like I was accepted. God knows how many of these drivers say: ‘This is not what a Formula 1 driver is. That’s not how you behave. This is not how you do it. Tattoos? No! A Formula 1 driver doesn’t have tattoos! A Formula 1 driver doesn’t have a personality–and piercings!” seven-time world champion driver Lewis Hamilton said in an interview with Vanity Fair
  • Hot Goss: The Flash actor Ezra Miller has been charged with felony burglary in Stamford, Vermont (yikes–the transgressions just keep piling on)
  • Life Hack: Exhaling as much air as possible helps you suppress laughter at inappropriate times

Looking Back…

On August 9th: Julius Caesar defeats Pompey in the Battle of Pharsalus and Pompey flees to Egypt (48 BC); Henry David Thoreau’s Walden is published (1854); Gerald Ford is sworn in as President of the United States after Nixon resigns (1974); singer and actress Whitney Houston is born (1963).

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