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Decades before subscription boxes or influencers shilling Tide and diet teas, Warren Buffett recognized a dynamic that nowadays powers everything from Patreon to TikTok to thousands of individual careers: fandom. If people love you enough, they will buy absolutely everything you’re selling. Your superfans will show up in droves to your convention to buy hats, T-shirts, candy, steaks, and everything else, all while loading up on your folksy, friendly-ole-neighborhood-billionaire wisdom. It’s an accomplishment worth celebrating as Buffett turns 95 and prepares to step down by year-end after six decades at the helm of his vast and sprawling Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate. Let’s look at how he did it. Annual shareholder letters as an early example Buffett began sending out annual shareholder letters in 1977, but they’ve always been more than simple financial updates. They also function as behind-the-scenes looks that let investors feel as if they were getting unprecedented access to his brain. Intentional or not, it’s a sophisticated approach to audience development and engagement. “Our goal is to communicate with you in a manner that we would wish you to use if our positions were reversed — that is, if you were Berkshire’s CEO while I and my family were passive investors, trusting you with our savings,” Buffett wrote in his 2025 letter. Appearing genuine may be the hardest thing of all, but one way to do it is to admit your failings. Buffett admits his missteps openly, using the words “mistake” or “error” multiple times in many if not most of the letters. Modern creators spend years and fortunes trying to build the kind of authentic relationship with audiences that Buffett has established through his annual letters. They chase engagement and conversion metrics that Buffett achieved without even trying — or at least without ever appearing to try. See’s Candies as a case study One of Buffett’s early experiments with fan economies came through See’s Candies, a California-based chocolate shop chain, which he acquired in 1972 for $25 million. While sales volumes grew only 2% or 3% per year, in line with inflation, See’s was able to raise its effective price per pound well above inflation each year. The chocolate was good chocolate, but customers’ emotional connection mattered even more. Their candy purchase represented their buying into the larger See’s story of quality, tradition, and California nostalgia. “Warren and I raised the prices of See’s Candies a little faster than others might have. There are actually people out there who don’t price everything as high as the market will easily stand. And once you figure that out, it’s like finding money in the street,” Charlie Munger later said of the acquisition. They’d discovered that emotional attachment can allow for premium pricing above an item’s objective value, now a hallmark of successful fan economies. They also observed that fans buying products year after year create recurring, subscription-like revenues. And it’s paid off handsomely for them. Their modest investment of $32 million over the company’s lifetime eventually produced more than $1 billion in aggregate profits (and that just as of 2007). Building a fan convention By the 1980s, Buffett had scaled these lessons into what would become a template for modern fan cons. The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, dubbed “Woodstock for Capitalists,” draws tens of thousands to Omaha each May — a pilgrimage that generates massive ancillary revenue. At the 2025 meeting alone, See’s Candy did $317,000 in sales against $283,000 the previous year, while Brooks shoes did $310,000 — an all-time record sales day. These aren’t accidental or incidental sales. They’re an outgrowth of extreme fan engagement. Depending on how you look at it, attendees come for financial information and stay for community, or they come for the community and sit through the financial information. “We’ve come every year for the last thirteen years. This is a family affair,” said one Chicago father in an interview with Inc. Magazine. “It’s like a rock concert. It’s the rock concert of capitalism. It’s like going on spring break, but when you went on spring break you didn’t have money.” Buffett has long understood that the meeting itself isn’t the product — the whole experience is. He creates scarcity through limited seating, exclusivity through shareholder-only access, and community through the entire shared ritual. In 2010, a giant Dairy Queen spoon signed by Warren Buffett was auctioned to fans for $4,500 — which sounds like something only Taylor Swift or the NFL might otherwise pull off. Cross-selling and upselling One of Buffett’s most sophisticated fan strategies has been his approach to portfolio expansion. Acquired companies that become Berkshire subsidiaries grow to be both revenue streams and cross-selling opportunities. Shareholders learn about portfolio holdings, and in the process they’re encouraged to become customers of GEICO, to shop for couches at Nebraska Furniture Mart, and to buy hot dogs and dip cones at Dairy Queen. This cross-selling to superfans generates massive value. Berkshire shareholders actively promote the companies they part-own, a kind of affiliate and word-of-mouth advertising that money can’t buy. Turn your head and squint, and it’s a lot like a multi-level marketing scheme for Fortune 500 companies, only legitimate and above-board, on top of being massively profitable. Buffett seen as a creator and influencer The contemporary influencer and creator playbook — building personal brands, making exclusive content for select subscribers, hosting expensive live events, cross-selling and upselling — only mirrors what Buffett has perfected over the decades. The scale is different, but the psychology and the tactics are identical. To borrow Buffett’s own preferred term, the sheer most powerful economic moat must be love itself. 📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief Read More

Eight years ago, when the first AI-powered investment funds launched, industry veterans dismissed them as expensive gimmicks. Today, artificial intelligence has quietly become the finance industry’s most valuable employee, performing tasks such as extracting data from thousands of documents, analyzing markets at superhuman speed, and helping investment firms manage their finances more efficiently than ever before. What it still can’t do is be Warren Buffett. As the Oracle of Omaha turns 95 this month, he remains characteristically wary of the technology that has transformed investing. At last year’s Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting, Buffett compared AI to nuclear weapons, saying it “scares the hell out of me.” Yet that hasn’t stopped him from investing heavily in companies like Apple and Amazon, which are dumping money into developing powerful AI systems that many worry (or hope) can replace human workers. That includes replacing Buffett himself. The Intelligent Livermore ETF, which launched this fall, uses ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude as its “investment committee,” training the large language models on decades of legendary investors’ writings and asking them to pick stocks in their style. The fund’s prospectus promises to harness the strategies of the investment world’s most illustrious minds, turning Warren Buffett’s folksy shareholder letters into algorithmic investment decisions. Doug Clinton, who runs Intelligent Alpha, the firm behind the ETF and other AI investment offerings, said his AI models can successfully replicate many aspects of Buffett’s approach. They can screen for companies with low price-to-earnings ratios and high profit margins, just like the Oracle does. For Clinton, the goal isn’t to unlock some secret sauce. “We haven’t thought about, ‘Hey, where’s the insight that’s unique from human beings?’” Clinton said. “We’re trying to see where can we, at scale, outperform the benchmarks.” About 80% of his firm’s 30 AI-driven strategies are beating their benchmarks, he said, by an average of 1000 basis points since inception. Even with that record, Clinton’s AI committee uses human oversight. His firm includes a final layer where a human approves the end portfolio, which he found people want as a fail-safe to ensure the AI isn’t hallucinating. The challenge, Clinton acknowledged, is something he calls “taste” — the ineffable quality that lets an investor look at 50 companies that meet all the quantitative criteria and instinctively know to pick just two of them.  “That’s still the delta that has not yet been figured out,” he said. Beyond Buffett’s territory While Buffett has built his fortune largely in public markets, AI is finding different opportunities in private markets, a space where the Oracle of Omaha doesn’t compete, and the data landscape offers new advantages for machines. Unlike public markets, where decades of quantitative analysts have already optimized trading strategies, private markets remained less explored by the algorithmic revolution until recently. Private markets present a fundamentally different challenge for both humans and AI, according to Matt Malone, head of investment management at Opto Investments, a platform that helps wealth managers build private markets portfolios for their clients. Instead of making rapid trading decisions, investors make one crucial choice: which fund manager gets their money. Then they’re along for the ride for years. Most private markets operate through drawdown funds, where investors commit money that gets deployed over time and returned over an even longer period. “We have now multimodal AIs that can extract information from a deck fairly efficiently, much more efficiently than a human can,” Malone said. “And frankly, a human doesn’t want to be doing that because it’s boring and repetitive.” His firm uses AI to pull relevant data from those PDFs, standardize it, and create databases that let them compare fund managers across metrics like how they generate returns. But Malone’s team still makes the final calls on which managers to back. The AI excels at backward-looking analysis, crunching historical performance data, while humans focus on forward-looking decisions about inflation, interest rates, and sector outlook. Sometimes that means rejecting managers that AI finds have stellar past performance. “We may say that [a fund manager] did great investing in hotels,” Malone said, “but if we don’t think hotels are a good investment going forward, we still don’t want to invest with this manager right now.” The quant reality check The AI revolution in finance has been more evolution than revolution, according to Bob Elliott, a former macro research lead at Bridgewater Associates who now runs Unlimited Funds, which uses machine learning to create low-cost versions of hedge fund and private equity strategies. As someone who has worked as a systematic investor for decades, Elliott sees the current AI moment differently than the broader public. “A lot of people think of AI as a radical change that happened with ChatGPT,” he said. “And I don’t really see it that way at all.” Elliott’s skepticism comes from working in a field that has been using sophisticated algorithms for decades. Quantitative funds have long employed complex mathematical models, and the recent advances in large language models haven’t dramatically changed their core work. Instead, falling compute costs and incremental improvements in machine learning techniques have been more valuable than anything to do with ChatGPT, according to Elliott. The result is an expensive AI arms race where everyone is chasing the same advantage. Elliott talks to managers who are now layering AI tools on top of their existing quantitative strategies, spending heavily on large language models and machine learning infrastructure. The question becomes whether all this AI spending creates a real edge or just raises the cost of doing business. Even in systematic investing, human accountability remains crucial, Elliott said, which is why the next Warren Buffett is unlikely to be AI. Outside of high-frequency trading, investors still want to look someone in the eye and hold them responsible. “For the super high frequency market, it’s about the machine, ” Elliott said. “For pretty much everyone else, they’re looking at the person across the table, and saying, ‘I don’t even care how you make the decision, but it’s you who is making the

American consumers continued spending more in July, posting the biggest monthly gain in four months and pointing to steady demand despite persistent inflation. Suggested Reading Household outlays rose 0.3% from the month before, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported. The increase was fueled by steady income growth and stronger purchases of goods, particularly cars, furniture, and recreational equipment. Related Content A key inflation measure watched closely by the Federal Reserve — the core personal consumption expenditures index, which leaves out food and energy — also rose 0.3% for the month as tariffs on imports raised the prices of some goods. The gauge increased to 2.9% year-on-year, its fastest pace in five months. Much of the latest price pressure came from services, including financial fees and leisure activities, while goods costs eased. That could add to concerns about inflation as President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs filter through into the wider economy. The Federal Reserve’s next interest rates decision is Sept. 17. Traders still expect the Fed to cut rates after Chair Jerome Powell opened the door to restarting rate cuts at an August speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but policymakers will receive several more key pieces of economic data before that which could yet swing the balance. The latest figures highlight how consumer demand has held up despite high borrowing costs and widespread concern over tariffs imposed by Trump in recent months. Many companies have so far tried to avoid passing on higher import costs by absorbing expenses or cutting inventories, but an increasing number have warned they will have to raise prices. Spending was largely underpinned by income growth, with wages and salaries jumping 0.6% in July, the largest gain since late 2024. Real disposable income went up 0.2% while the household saving rate was unchanged.  However, with last month’s data suggesting the labor market is losing steam, some are concerned that paychecks will not keep pace with price rises as the year progresses. High prices, inflation, and worries about tariffs weighed on consumer sentiment in a recent survey. More jobs data is due next week, which could bring fresh clues about this.  Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell and the Fed this year for its repeated decisions to hold rates steady, mocking the chair as “Too Late” and a “moron” while insisting inflation is no longer a concern. On Monday, he moved to oust Fed governor Lisa Cook, part of a bid to assert more control over the central bank. 📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief Read More

The 10 metro areas where home values are falling the most, according to Zillow The days of bidding wars are ending — and many metro areas are seeing steep drops in home prices. The red-hot U.S. housing market, once defined by bidding wars and buyers stretching budgets, is finally cooling after years of surging prices. In many regions, home values are slipping and inventories of unsold properties have swelled to levels not seen since the 2008 financial crisis. The combination of mortgage rates hovering around 7% and economic uncertainty tied to tariffs has created a host of reasons for hesitation. Sellers are making concessions, and buyers hold the cards. Even luxury buyers, who are typically less sensitive to borrowing costs, are pulling back. What’s emerged is less the frenzied seller’s market of recent years and more a traditional housing market where negotiation is back on the table. Almost half of sellers nationwide are already offering concessions, according to Redfin. Citi Research has warned that housing activity looks set to contract, calling residential investment “the most interest rate sensitive sector in the economy.” Federal Housing Finance Agency Director William Pulte has echoed those concerns, publicly urging the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Once-booming Texas and Florida are at the center of the change, with metro areas in both states seeing some of the steepest year-over-year declines in home values. Even beyond those states, metros like Phoenix, San Francisco, and Atlanta are seeing values retreat. Using Zillow data, we’ve compiled a list of the markets that are feeling the sting of high-interest rates and a slowing economy the most. Continue reading to see the 10 metro areas seeing the biggest depreciation in home prices. Jackie Snow and Niamh Rowe contributed reporting to this article.  2 / 11 #10: Atlanta, GA Atlanta posted a 3.1% decline, with the typical home now valued at $384,607. 3 / 11 #9. San Antonio, TX San Antonio saw home prices dip 3.1%, leaving the median at $283,286. 4 / 11 #8. Jacksonville, FL Jacksonville registered a 3.4% year-over-year decrease, with average values at $352,549. 5 / 11 #7: Phoenix, AZ Matt Mawson / Getty Images Phoenix home values fell 3.5%, bringing the typical property to $448,513. 6 / 11 #6: San Francisco, CA Prasit photo / Getty Images San Francisco recorded a 3.8% drop, but still holds the highest home price on the list at $1,127,650. 7 / 11 #5: Dallas, TX Fran Polito / Getty Images Dallas saw prices dip 3.9% year-over-year, leaving the median value at $369,096. 8 / 11 #4: Orlando, FL carlofranco / Getty Images Orlando posted a 4.3% decline, with the average home now valued at $389,304. 9 / 11 #3: Miami, Florida Nisian Hughes / Getty Images Miami experienced a 4.6% drop in home values, bringing the typical price down to $472,814. 10 / 11 #2: Austin, TX Brandon Bell / Staff / Getty Images Austin followed closely, where home prices slid 6.0%, to $437,456, compared with last July. 11 / 11 #1: Tampa, FL John Coletti / Getty Images Tampa saw the steepest decline, with typical home values falling 6.2% year-over-year to $361,115. Read More

High home prices and mortgage rates have created unaffordable conditions for many Americans, but the housing market’s ability to create more wealth has sputtered. That’s because even as home prices continue to hover around record levels, they are also edging lower and lagging behind the rate of inflation, which has heated up amid President Donald Trump’s tariffs. “For the first time in years, home prices are failing to keep pace with broader inflation,” said Nicholas Godec, head of Fixed Income Tradables & Commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a statement on Tuesday. The last time that happened was mid-2023. The latest S&P Cotality Case-Shiller home price data showed that the 20-city index fell 0.3% in June from the prior month, marking the fourth consecutive monthly decline. On an annual basis, the 20-city composite was up 2.1%, down from a 2.8% increase in the previous month, and the national index saw a 1.9% yearly gain, down from 2.3%. Meanwhile, the consumer price index rose 2.7% in June from a year ago. “This reversal is historically significant: During the pandemic surge, home values were climbing at double-digit annual rates that far exceeded inflation, building substantial real wealth for homeowners,” Godec added. “Now, American housing wealth has actually declined in inflation-adjusted terms over the past year—a notable erosion that reflects the market’s new equilibrium.” Weak prices suggest underlying housing demand remains muted, he said, despite the spring and summer historically being the peak period for homebuying. In fact, this year’s selling season has been a bust. While sales of existing homes have ticked up recently, they are still subdued and prices are flat. In addition, sales of new homes are slumping with prices down. Conditions have been so dire that Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi sounded the alarm on the housing market even louder last month. In Godec’s view, the recent shift in the housing market could represent a new normal—but one that also has a positive angle. “Looking ahead, this housing cycle’s maturation appears to be settling around inflation-parity growth rather than the wealth-building engine of recent years,” he said. That’s as pandemic-era hot spots in the Sun Belt have cooled off with demand increasingly tilting toward established industrial centers that enjoy sustainable fundamentals like employment growth, greater affordability, and favorable demographics. “While this represents a loss of the extraordinary gains homeowners enjoyed from 2020-2022, it may signal a healthier long-term trajectory where housing appreciation aligns more closely with broader economic fundamentals rather than speculative excess,” Godec added. Meanwhile, analysts at EY-Parthenon sounded gloomier about the housing market in a report that also came out on Tuesday, predicting that home prices will turn negative on an annual basis by year-end due to low demand and rising inventories. Home listings are up 25% from a year ago, and inventories have risen for 21 consecutive months. Homebuilders are also cautious given that demand is under pressure and construction costs are still elevated. “Looking forward, the housing market is expected to stay stagnant, as slowing income growth and persistently high borrowing costs continue to limit demand,” the EY report said. “While proposed changes to the regulatory environment can help improve builder sentiment, elevated construction costs due to higher tariffs along with ample inventories will continue to constrain construction activity.” Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list. Read More

U.S. producers of corn and soybeans have sent dire warnings as prices for their crops have crashed in recent years while President Donald Trump’s trade war whipsaws farmers. On Thursday, the National Corn Growers Association raised alarms about “the economic crisis hitting rural America, as commodity prices drop at a time when input costs remain at near-record highs.” Corn prices have plunged more than 50% from their 2022 peak, while production costs are down just 3% in that span, translating to a loss of 85 cents per bushel, the NCGA said, adding that the outlook for next year is worse with even lower prices and higher costs. The NCGA called on Congress and the Trump administration to boost demand, including via higher blends of ethanol and increased foreign market access. A week before that, the American Soybean Association sent a letter to Trump, warning that “U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice.” The group asked that Trump prioritize soybeans in trade talks with China, seeking major purchase commitments as well as the removal of Beijing’s duties on the U.S. “Historically, the U.S. was the provider of choice for Chinese customers,” the letter said. “However, due to ongoing tariff retaliation, our longstanding customers in China have and will continue to turn to our competitors in South America to meet their demand, a demand Brazil can meet due to significantly increased production since the previous trade war with China.” With harvest season fast approaching, the association added that China hasn’t purchased any U.S. soybeans for the months ahead. The longer negotiations with China drag on without a trade deal—and the deeper farmers go into the fall— the more pain they will feel, it said. Like the corn growers, the soybean growers also cited sharply lower prices and high costs. Since peaking in 2022, soybean prices have fallen about 40%. “Soybean farmers are under extreme financial stress,” the group said. “Prices continue to drop and at the same time our farmers are paying significantly more for inputs and equipment. U.S. soybean farmers cannot survive a prolonged trade dispute with our largest customer.” Farm incomes, credit conditions deteriorate The bleak picture of the agricultural economy was echoed by the Federal Reserve’s latest survey of farm financial conditions. It found that weaker income has reduced liquidity for farmers, boosting demand for financing. At the same time, credit conditions deteriorated with roughly 30% of respondents in the Chicago Fed and Kansas City Fed districts reporting lower repayment rates versus a year ago, while the Minneapolis Fed region’s share was around 40% and the St. Louis Fed’s was 50%. To be sure, U.S. farmers are set to receive substantial help. After Trump launched his latest trade war earlier this year, the administration and lawmakers began talking about a bailout for farmers in April, similar to how they received a bailout during Trump’s first term, when he waged a trade war against China. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was signed in July included about $66 billion in agriculture-focused spending. The vast majority, about $59 billion, is earmarked for farm safety-net enhancements, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In addition, other trade deals Trump has negotiated should see countries elsewhere in Asia step up purchases of U.S. crops. For example Indonesia and Bangladesh have agreed to boost buying under their agreements, and sources told Reuters this past week that Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand may increase feed grain purchases. “There have been productive trade discussions which present an opportunity for the U.S. to strengthen its access to markets in our region,” said Timothy Loh, the U.S. Soybean Export Council’s regional director for Southeast Asia & Oceania, told Reuters. “We are anticipating higher demand for U.S. products such as soymeal and other U.S. agricultural exports into Southeast Asia.” Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list. Read More

There has never been a tie vote on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, but the Federal Reserve has also never been under attack like it is now. That’s after President Donald Trump took the unprecedented step Monday to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who has sued to block the move. A judge heard arguments in the case on Friday but didn’t issue a ruling. Meanwhile, the composition of the Fed is changing, tilting the central bank more dovish. Trump has named Stephen Miran to fill a vacancy on the board left by Adriana Kugler, who left before her term was due to expire in January. Miran would join Trump-appointed governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, who cast dissenting votes at the last Fed meeting as they sought to lower rates. And Jerome Powell’s term as Fed chairman expires in May, though it’s uncertain if he plans to remain on the board of governors until his term in that seat expires in 2028. If Trump is able to replace Cook, that would shift the balance even more toward easing—and potentially clear the way for a reshuffle of the Fed’s regional bank presidents, who take turns serving on the FOMC. But even if the Fed cuts rates in September like Trump wants, it’s unlikely to quiet the president as he has said rates should be more than 300 basis points lower than they are now. It sets up a possible new era of more contentious meetings at the Fed, which typically has been driven by consensus with even one dissenting vote being rare. Votes may be closer. And given that the FOMC has an even number of 12 members, that raises the question of what would happen in a tie vote. It’s not a far-fetched possibility. According to a note last month from Christopher Hodge, chief U.S. economist at Natixis CIB Americas, there have been three occasions when a decision on the FOMC passed by a one-vote majority, though the last time it occurred was in 1973. The FOMC’s rules and procedures don’t discuss a tie scenario, and the Fed didn’t provide a comment. Robert Eisenbeis, who previously served as director of research at the Atlanta Fed, told Fortune that in the event of a tie vote, the federal funds rate would stay the same. There is no override provision, meaning the chair doesn’t have the ability to force a different decision, he explained via email. It’s also not clear if policymakers would take another vote during that same meeting or wait until the next scheduled meeting to vote. “There is no precedent here,” Eisenbeis said. “I would presume there would be the option for a revote, but if not, then no change in the funds rate. If there is no change in the rate, then the next meeting is where another review and vote would take place.” Hodge, who previously served as principal economist at the New York Fed, told Fortune via email that the question of a tie hasn’t been covered in any official public documents explicitly. Still, the chair has significant authority in guiding meetings and decisions, he said, noting that the FOMC is also a self-governing committee that has the ability to alter its rules. “In the absence of an explicit tie-breaking rule, the chair is generally understood to have the ability to cast a deciding vote or guide the committee toward resolution, as is common in other deliberative bodies with a presiding officer,” Hodge explained. “This is not made explicit in any document I have seen and is more of a custom than a rule.” Eisenbeis believes Alan Greenspan always voted last when he served as Fed chairman to prevent a tie vote on the FOMC. As the Fed faces more turnover, there is plenty of fodder for debate, potentially leading to more split votes. Inflation has edged further above the Fed’s 2% target amid Trump’s tariffs, but it’s unclear if the uptick will be short-lived or more prolonged. Meanwhile, the job market is cooling off, though there’s disagreement on Wall Street over whether that’s a demand issue or a supply issue caused by Trump’s immigration crackdown. Similar crosscurrents produced a 4-4-1 deadlock at the Bank of England earlier this month, as four policymakers voted to keep rates steady, four voted to cut by a quarter point, and one voted to cut by a half point. That prompted the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee to hold a decisive revote for the first time since it was created in 1997. The subsequent 5-4 decision lowered rates a quarter point to 4% from 4.25%. The FOMC’s next meeting is on Sept. 16-17, and exactly who will show up remains in doubt. Even if Cook wins in court, it’s not guaranteed that she would be allowed to return to her duties immediately while the government further appeals the case, JPMorgan said in a note Friday. It’s also not certain if Miran will be confirmed by the Senate in time for the next meeting. And even though Powell has opened the door to a rate cut next month, other policymakers remain more hawkish, while further weakness in the labor market could make some doves even more dovish. In a speech Thursday, Waller said he wouldn’t back a cut of more than a quarter point next month, but that could change if new jobs data come in worse. “While there are signs of a weakening labor market, I worry that conditions could deteriorate further and quite rapidly, and I think it is important that the FOMC not wait until such a deterioration is under way and risk falling behind the curve in setting appropriate monetary policy,” he said. Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list. Read More

The car company run by Elon Musk asked a federal court Friday to dismiss massive damages awarded to victims of a deadly crash, arguing that their lawyers had misled the jury by improperly bringing up the billionaire during the trial. The filing in Miami federal court seeks to overturn the $243 million award after a 22-year old student out stargazing was flung through the air to her death by a runaway Tesla equipped with Autopilot features that Musk had talked up for years. A jury earlier this month found that the speeding Tesla driver was mostly to blame but Tesla was also responsible because of faulty technology. The case has been watched closely by carmakers racing to develop fully self-driving features. They fear it could portend massive liability risks should future juries reviewing accidents decide carmakers are also to blame even when drivers act recklessly. “If the verdict is allowed to stand, it will chill innovation, harm road safety and invite future juries to punish manufacturers who bring new safety features to market,” the company said in the filing. Tesla is also arguing that opposing lawyers “led the jury astray” by introducing “highly prejudicial but irrelevant evidence” suggesting Tesla had hid or lost video and data that, after it was dug up by the opposing side, helped recreate what went wrong moments before the crash. Tesla had said that it made a mistake in not offering up the evidence earlier and did not do that deliberately. Musk had taken a big chance by allowing the case to go to trial at a pivotal moment for his electric car company. He is trying to convince Americans that his self-driving technology, improved since the 2019 crash, can be trusted amid ambitious plans to roll out driverless Tesla robotaxis around the country. Many similar cases against Tesla had either been dismissed or been settled by the company before going to trial. The plaintiff lawyers revealed in a court filing last week that they had told Tesla that they were willing to accept $60 million to settle. But Tesla refused. In the end, the jury decided on compensatory and punitive damages for the family of the killed Naibel Benavides and her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, amounting to four times that amount. The filing by Tesla on Friday asked the judge to grant it a new trial, throw out the award or at least vastly reduce it. The jury held that Tesla bore significant responsibility because its technology failed even though the driver had admitted he was wrong to be distracted by his cellphone. The driver had settled separately with the Benavides family and Angulo. Tesla has said the technology had nothing to do with the crash. The plaintiff lawyers also said Tesla’s decision to even use the term Autopilot showed it was willing to mislead people and take big risks with their lives because the system only helps drivers with lane changes, slowing a car and other tasks, falling far short of driving the car itself. They said other automakers use terms like “driver assist” and “copilot” to make sure drivers don’t rely too much on the technology. European regulators have complained about Tesla word choices for its driver assistance software, and have raised questions about whether it misleads drivers, too. Musk had told investors last year that it expected to get approval from those regulators for a more advanced version of Autopilot in March, but it’s still waiting for the go-ahead. That advanced driver assistance feature, which Musk calls Full-Self Driving, has also drawn scrutiny in U.S. for possibly misleading drivers. An administrative judge in California is hearing a case in which the state motor vehicles department is seeking to withdraw Tesla’s license to sell cars partly because of what it says are misleading names. “I trusted the technology too much,” the driver in the Florida crash, George McGee, said in his testimony. “I believed that if the car saw something in front of it, it would provide a warning and apply the brakes.” The lead defense lawyer in the Miami case, Joel Smith, countered that Tesla warns drivers that they must keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel yet McGee chose not to do that while he looked for a dropped cellphone, adding to the danger by speeding. Tesla stock fell nearly 3.5% Friday, after a drop a day earlier when sales figures out of Europe showed car buyers there are still avoiding Tesla. The company had been hit with boycotts and protest earlier his year after Musk embraced extreme right wing politicians there. Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list. Read More

A late Tennessee sheriff who inspired a Hollywood movie about a law enforcement officer who took on organized crime killed his wife in 1967 and led people to believe she was murdered by his enemies, authorities said Friday. Authorities acknowledged that the finding will likely shock many who grew up as Buford Pusser fans and watched 1973’s “Walking Tall,” which immortalized him as a tough but fair sheriff with zero tolerance for crime. The movie was remade in 2004, and many officers joined law enforcement because of his story, according to Mark Davidson, the district attorney for Tennessee’s 25th judicial district. There is enough evidence that if Pusser, the McNairy County sheriff who died in a car crash seven years after his wife’s death, were alive today, prosecutors would present an indictment to a grand jury for the killing of Pauline Mullins Pusser, Davidson said. Investigators also uncovered signs that she suffered from domestic violence. Prosecutors worked with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which began reexamining decades-old files on Pauline’s death in 2022 as part of its regular review of cold cases, agency director David Rausch said. Agents found inconsistencies between Buford Pusser’s version of events and the physical evidence, received a tip about a potential murder weapon and exhumed Pauline’s body for an autopsy. “This case is not about tearing down a legend. It is about giving dignity and closure to Pauline and her family and ensuring that the truth is not buried with time,” Davidson said in a news conference streamed online. “The truth matters. Justice matters. Even 58 years later. Pauline deserves both.” Evidence does not back up sheriff’s story The case dates to Aug. 12, 1967. Buford Pusser got a call in the early morning hours about a disturbance. He reported that his wife volunteered to ride along with him as he responded. Buford Pusser said that shortly after they passed New Hope Methodist Church, a car pulled up and fired several times into the vehicle, killing Pauline and injuring the sheriff. Buford Pusser spent 18 days in the hospital and required several surgeries to recover. The case was built largely on his own statement and closed quickly, Rausch said. During the reexamination of the case, Dr. Michael Revelle, an emergency medicine physical and medical examiner, studied postmortem photographs, crime scene photographs, notes made by the medical examiner at the time and Buford Pusser’s statements. He concluded that Pauline was more likely than not shot outside the car and then placed inside it. He found that cranial trauma suffered by Pauline didn’t match crime scene photographs of the car’s interior. Blood spatter on the hood outside the car contradicted Buford Pusser’s statements. The gunshot wound on his cheek was in fact a close-contact wound and not one fired from long range, as Buford Pusser described, and was likely self-inflicted, Revelle concluded. Pauline’s autopsy revealed she had a broken nose that had healed prior to her death. Davidson said statements from people who were around at the time she died support the conclusion that she was a victim of domestic violence. Brother says investigation gave him closure Pauline’s younger brother, Griffon Mullins, said the investigation gave him closure. He said in a recorded video played at the news conference that their other sister died without knowing what happened to Pauline and he is grateful he will die knowing. “You would fall in love with her because she was a people person. And of course, my family would always go to Pauline if they had an issue or they needed some advice and she was always there for them,” he said. “She was just a sweet person. I loved her with all my heart.” Mullins said he knew there was some trouble in Pauline’s marriage, but she wasn’t one to talk about her problems. For that reason, Mullins said he was “not totally shocked.” Asked about the murder weapon and whether it matched autopsy findings, Rausch recommended reading the case file for specifics. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation plans to make the entire file, which exceeds 1,000 pages, available to the public by handing it over to the University of Tennessee at Martin once it finishes with redactions. The school will create an online, searchable database for the case. Until then, members of the public can make appointments to review it in person or can purchase a copy, said university Chancellor Yancy Freeman Sr. Introducing the 2025 Fortune Global 500, the definitive ranking of the biggest companies in the world. Explore this year’s list. Read More

Crypto Charts Look ‘So Broken and Bearish They’re Bullish’ Ahead of Fed Meeting, Says Analyst Alex Krüger says recent liquidations and scary charts could set up a bullish rebound, though conviction trends may wait until after the Fed’s Sept. 17 decision. Updated Aug 30, 2025, 9:24 p.m. Published Aug 30, 2025, 9:00 p.m. Crypto analyst and macroeconomist Alex Krüger thinks the market looks ugly enough to turn bullish. On Saturday, Krüger wrote on X, that “most crypto charts now look so broken and bearish that it’s bullish.” He argued that when price action looks this bad, the panic has usually gone far enough that a reversal may not be far behind. The bearish charts Krüger attached a series of charts from Binance and derivatives dashboards. They included bitcoin BTC$108,614.06 and ether (ETH) spot price charts, both of which had fallen below short-term upward trendlines, creating a technically bearish picture. He also posted a solana SOL$204.71 chart that showed relative resilience compared with BTC and ETH. Alongside those, he shared BTC-USDT and ETH-USDT derivatives charts, which combined futures indicators — such as funding rates and long liquidations — with options metrics like skew. Together, they showed traders had turned heavily defensive. Liquidations and leverage reset In his post, Krüger said long liquidations had been “significant,” especially in “the last two rounds after the close today.” In futures markets, traders can borrow to take bullish bets. When prices fall, their collateral gets wiped out and exchanges automatically close positions. This kind of forced selling pushes prices down further in a cascade. Once it’s over, however, markets can stabilize because the excess leverage has already been flushed out. Majors under pressure, alts steadier The analyst also highlighted that bitcoin and ether absorbed most of the selling, while many altcoins had already stopped crashing earlier in the day. Normally, smaller tokens collapse after majors, not before them. For Krüger, that divergence is “often a sign of upcoming strength,” suggesting panic selling may be winding down. Krüger told followers to “check the skew,” noting that puts were much more expensive than calls. In options markets, that imbalance signals defensive positioning and heightened fear. For contrarians like Krüger, one-sided fear often precedes a rebound, because if everyone is already hedging, there are fewer sellers left to push prices lower. The FOMC catalyst While he is “bullish into next week,” Krüger said he doesn’t expect strong trends to develop until after the Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting. The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meets Sept. 16–17, with a rate decision and press conference at the conclusion on Sept. 17. He expects the Fed to cut interest rates, which he argues is “not fully priced in.” Lower rates reduce the cost of borrowing and often add liquidity, which can boost demand for risk assets like crypto. The cycle view Krüger emphasized that this is not the end of the cycle, even if prices fall further in the short term. At the same time, he does not expect the kind of euphoric “blow-off top” that has marked past crypto bull markets. The one exception, he said, could be SOL, which continues to attract inflows from new decentralized treasuries deploying capital on the network. For Krüger, the setup is straightforward: charts look ugly, liquidations are behind, options pricing screams fear, and the Fed decision looms. His message was simple — the time to bet on upside is when panic is loudest, not when celebrations begin. AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy. More For You Given Trump’s Pro-Crypto Stance, Is it Time to Fully Ditch Gold in Favor of Bitcoin? Bitwise’s André Dragosch argues gold still protects against stock sell-offs while bitcoin hedges bond stress — raising questions about their roles in 2025 portfolios. What to know: Bitwise’s André Dragosch says gold works best as a hedge when equities tumble, while bitcoin offers more resilience when U.S. bond markets are under pressure. Historical data and industry research back the split: gold often rises in equity bear markets, while bitcoin has held up better during Treasury sell-offs. So far in 2025, gold is up more than 30% and bitcoin about 15%, reflecting their diverging roles as investors weigh higher yields, equity volatility, and Trump’s pro-crypto stance. Read full story Read More