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