July 20, 2026

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Fancy that. One of the black leather Tom Ford jackets worn by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang sold at a Sotheby’s auction on Friday for $960,000. That’s about 9,900% more than the jacket retails for, simply because Huang wore it at a Foxconn event in Taipei, Taiwan, in 2023.

CNBC said the auction result is “a sign that collectors are looking to bid on artifacts and collectibles from the artificial intelligence boom.” What, do they think AI is going to have memory issues or something?

—Brendan Cosgrove, Holly Van Leuven, Neal Freyman

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

The economic (and literal) winners of the World Cup
Developments in the Iran war
Boomers not downsizing as planned

Markets: Year-to-Date

Nasdaq

25,520.24

+9.80%

S&P

7,457.69

+8.94%

Dow

52,146.42

+8.50%

10-Year

4.541%

+37.8 bps

Bitcoin

$64,819.51

-25.93%

AMC Entertainment

$1.94

+24.36%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 11:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: It’ll be a quiet week for government economic data, so expect corporate earnings and Iran developments to drive much of the conversation in the coming days.
Stock spotlight: Grab the popcorn, because theater chain AMC reports earnings today after a big weekend (h/t Chris Nolan; more on that below), and an even bigger 2026, with box-office grosses expected to top $10 billion this year for the first time since before the pandemic, per Rentrak.

STOPPAGE TIME

Spain wasn’t the only World Cup winner

Spain receives the World Cup trophy from Infantino and Trump

Spain receives the World Cup from FIFA President Gianni Infantino and US President Donald Trump. Richard Sellers/Allstar/Getty Images

After 100+ matches and 100 million memes, the World Cup concluded yesterday. Spain outlasted Argentina in extra time to win 1–0, thanks to a defense that snuffed out more shot attempts than a locked liquor cabinet. But while Spanish players got to hoist the shiny World Cup trophy over their heads, they weren’t the only ones who went home with gold.

Governing party: FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, is expected to announce record World Cup revenue of $15 billion from this year’s tournament, easily topping the $11 billion it had projected, according to the Guardian. Part of that comes from the decision to implement dynamic pricing, and the fact that FIFA gets a cut from ticket sales in the secondary market. Yahoo, citing Gametime, reported the median price for a ticket to the final match was a record $10,835.

OK, so besides FIFA…

Bank of America’s CEO estimated that the World Cup generated about $20 billion in economic activity in the US, with restaurants and bars among the biggest winners. According to the Beer Institute trade association:

Beer sales spiked 4% nationally during the first four weeks of the World Cup, compared to the same period last year.
They jumped 14% in host cities (looking at you, Tartan Army).

On brand: According to MediaRadar, brands spent at least $857 million during the tournament’s matches, the Sports Business Journal reported. And Fox Sports, which owned the US broadcast rights, raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars per 30-second ad. Jerseys flew off the shelves, too—even the counterfeit ones that spell Messi with a “Y.”

What about the future? Before the final started, more than $1.2 billion was traded on Kalshi, just on the question of who would win the World Cup, CNBC reported. Over the course of the tournament, the prediction platform said it netted 3 million new users.

Not everybody won. Workforce platform UKG projected in June that the tournament could end up costing US employers $11.7 billion in lost productivity. Well, maybe if the semifinal games didn’t start at 3pm ET…—BC

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World

Tour de headlines

🇮🇷 The US conducted another round of strikes in Iran to avenge deaths of US service members. The US Central Command said yesterday that a soldier was killed on Saturday in Iraq during the “controlled detonation” of an Iranian drone. It was the 17th death of a member of the US military since the war began on Feb. 28. On Saturday, the military had announced the death of two active-duty Army soldiers in Jordan the day prior. Returning to Washington from the World Cup final, President Trump told reporters, “We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honor of the…three great patriots.” Iran responded early Monday by attacking US allies Bahrain and Kuwait.

🇺🇦 Protests in Ukraine continued over Zelensky’s military shake-up. Beginning on Friday, Ukrainians took to the streets to denounce the country’s senior military leadership for the first time since Russia invaded in 2022. The rare protests were sparked by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s dismissal of popular 35-year-old defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov for clashing with 60-year-old Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top army commander. Fedorov had been a driving force behind Ukraine’s recent successful drone warfare efforts. Some protesters in Kyiv on Saturday said Syrskyi was “busy with politics instead of the front.” Zelensky held a second day of calls with senior military leaders on Sunday as he tried to resolve the situation.

🍿 The Odyssey earned back its budget in two days thanks to smash opening. What do Odysseus and Christopher Nolan have in common? They are both captains who brought it home. The Odyssey earned $264.1 million worldwide in its opening weekend at the box office, good for director Nolan’s largest worldwide release ever. And $124.5 million of that came from the domestic box office. The film had a production budget of $250 million. The success is major validation for Universal Pictures, which, according to the Wall Street Journal, gives the star director “near-total autonomy” after winning him away from Warner Bros.—HVL

Upsizing

Boomers won’t go gentle into that good condo

two seniors looking at the exterior of a home

Ljubaphoto/Getty Images

It appears that boomers in the housing market have discovered Bryan Johnson, because they are rejecting the expectations of aging.

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 7% of homebuyers aged 61 to 70 said the main reason they bought their new home was that they wanted more space, up from 4% in 2016. While there are still more downsizers than upsizers among this demographic, thinking bigger is becoming more popular.

The seniors have it

With “it” being large houses and purchasing power. Boomers and older Americans:

Owned 28% of US homes with three or more bedrooms in 2024, according to Redfin.
Account for 42% of current homebuyers, according to the NAR.
Hold around $110 trillion in wealth, per the Wall Street Journal.

The outlet profiled many well-off boomers who want to age in place, prompting them to buy larger homes they can modify to suit their health needs, guests, and even their collections.

However, the boomer bottleneck in the housing market has conspired with other economic forces to limit homebuyer affordability. The NAR said it fell for the fifth straight month in June, and that the median price of an existing home of any type in the US hit an all-time high: $440,600.—HVL

calendar

The week ahead

Tesla Cybercabs on a lot at Tesla Giga Texas. Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

Earnings season heats up: It’s time for the one thing that the World Cup couldn’t deliver: quarterly updates. Mag Seven members Alphabet and Tesla report earnings on Wednesday, along with IBM and Texas Instruments. Then, Intel delivers results on Thursday. Capital One and American Express will also report earnings this week, along with telecom heavyweights AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile.

Tariff deadlines are so back: When the Supreme Court shot down President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs in February, he slapped a new 10% tariff on the world using Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. That action only authorized tariffs for 150 days, though, and that deadline is Friday. Either Congress will have to extend them (not likely), or the Trump administration will have to find a new legal justification for tariffs (more likely).

House work: With the August recess looming, House Republicans are reportedly looking to move some legislation this week, including a budget reconciliation package and a bill that restricts members of Congress from buying new stocks, according to The Hill. If passed, both bills face an uncertain future in the Senate.

But wait, there’s more:

A provisional deadline for the European Commission to decide whether to approve Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is on Wednesday.
Cycling’s biggest race, the Tour de France, wraps up on Sunday.

BRENDAN’S GOT GOOD NEWS

Wake up, new monkey just dropped

Colobus congoensis is ready for monkey business. Daniel Rosengren

Mondays are bad enough, so the Brew’s own Brendan Cosgrove scoured the internet for a positive news story to help you start the week off right.

Even Old World monkeys can be fresh-faced. Meet the Likweli, a newly discovered medium-sized, black-haired monkey that kind of looks like it just ate an orange popsicle. Researchers, funded in part by the National Geographic Society, first spotted the demure primate in a Congolese rainforest back in 2008, but didn’t have definitive proof it was its own species until recently, according to a paper published in the journal PLOS One last Wednesday.

They dubbed the monkey Colobus congoensis, and have recommended its common name be Likweli, which is what some locals called it (on rare occasions when they saw one). It’s the fifth new African monkey to be discovered in 75 years, and one of the last species to be contacted about their car’s extended warranty.—BC

Comic trivia

Which comedian, who was fired after five days working at SNL, just set a world record for most tickets sold to a comedy show with 76,212 at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field?

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Shane Gillis

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: demure, meaning “reserved.” Thanks to David Rock from Greensburg, PA, who was not too shy to submit the suggestion multiple times. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✳︎ A Note From Doroni

This is a paid advertisement for Doroni Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.doroni.io/. A reservation of the ticker symbol is not a guarantee that we will be listed on the NASDAQ. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.

Written by Brendan Cosgrove, Holly Van Leuven , and Neal Freyman

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☕ Upsizing