Finance
Budget EVs, Crypto Climbs & Cocktail Profits
May 29, 2025
Turns out, you can’t just sip whiskey and manifest a beat. Shares of Brown-Forman (BF.B $28.22, -3.14%)—a.k.a. the company behind Jack Daniel’s—got absolutely wrecked, dropping over 15% in early trading after showing up to earnings day with nothing but regret and a weak bar tab.
The numbers? Brutal. EPS came in at $0.31 vs. the $0.34 analysts expected—not a disaster, but not what you want from a company that sells comfort by the bottle. Revenue was worse: $894 million vs. Wall Street's wishful $965.8 million. Apparently even America's favorite export-strength bourbon couldn’t close that gap.
But the real buzzkill came in the guidance: the company now expects declines in both organic sales and net income for the full year. Analysts had been counting on at least a flat profit line and modest growth. Nope.
So what happened? Maybe high-end booze is starting to feel the pinch of inflation, or maybe the world finally reached peak whiskey. Either way, investors clearly thought they were getting a dependable slow sipper—and got something that tastes more like a regrettable well pour at last call.
If you were betting on Brown-Forman as a safe haven in a volatile market, this was your reminder that even legacy liquor stocks can go flat fast. Bottoms up—just don’t look at your portfolio.
Bank of America thinks Robinhood (HOOD $70.20, +3.30%) is a “prime candidate” for inclusion in the S&P 500, and Wall Street is suddenly acting like it’s a done deal. The stock has ripped nearly 50% in the past month, defying a mostly sideways market and logic in equal measure.
For those keeping score at home, the S&P 500 is still supposed to represent America’s most established, reliable companies. But sure—let’s maybe add the brokerage best known for turning options trading into a mobile game and accidentally setting off the GameStop saga. To be fair, inclusion would mean a tsunami of index-fund demand. Roughly $10 trillion is benchmarked to the S&P 500, and any addition means all those funds have to pile in to stay aligned. That kind of forced buying can send a stock soaring—temporarily, at least.
But is Robinhood really a textbook example of long-term market resilience? Or are investors just front-running a headline and hoping passive flows bail them out later?
With S&P expected to announce index changes after the close Friday, some traders seem more focused on index arbitrage than fundamentals. After all, nothing says “blue-chip credibility” like a company that was written off as a post-meme-era punchline just last year.
Let’s be honest: if this rally is about index inclusion, we’ve entered the phase of the cycle where stocks go up not because of what they are, but because of what ETFs might be forced to do. Wise? Not exactly. But in this market, that's just called strategy.
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It took years for the UK to land a legitimate tech champion on its home turf. Now that it finally did—Wise (formerly TransferWise), the fintech once hailed as the future of British innovation—it’s packing its bags for Wall Street.
Wise plans to shift its primary listing to New York, hoping to court more investors and unlock a higher valuation. Translation: “Thanks for the direct listing, London. We’ll let you know how Nasdaq treats us.”
It’s a gut punch to the London Stock Exchange, which has long resembled a retirement home for sleepy giants—banks, oil majors, miners, and pharmaceutical stalwarts. Even now, with the FTSE 100 somehow outpacing its U.S. counterparts (a rare moment of glory), the market still feels stuck in the past.
When Wise went public in 2021, it was supposed to signal a new era—a sign that the UK could foster homegrown innovation and compete with the flash and funding of Silicon Valley. Fast forward three years, and that experiment looks more like a slow-motion tech exodus.
It’s not just unflattering—it’s unforced. London courts companies with outdated listing rules and half-hearted incentives, then acts shocked when high-growth firms bail for deeper, tech-savvier capital markets.
The UK wanted to play in the big leagues. It got one tech MVP... and lost it before the playoffs even started.
If this all feels a little circular, that’s because it is. Nvidia (NVDA $141.90, +1.21%) took a major stake in CoreWeave(CRWV $140.60, +3.78%)—a company whose entire business model more or less revolves around buying massive quantities of Nvidia GPUs. Fast forward a few weeks, and Nvidia has already papered a nearly $3.1 billion gain on that position this quarter alone.
Yes, Nvidia invested in a customer, watched the IPO pop, and is now looking at one of the most profitable quarters in the S&P 500—just from that one position. If you’re getting “hedge fund in a chipmaker’s clothing” vibes, you’re not alone.
To recap: Nvidia held about 24 million CoreWeave shares at the end of Q1, valued at $900 million. As of today, that stake is flirting with $4 billion. That’s more net income than 473 S&P 500 companies made last quarter, right ahead of Pfizer and nipping at Disney’s heels. From one investment. In one quarter.
This isn’t just a tech win—it’s some sort of cosmic loop of self-reinforcing value. Nvidia sells the shovels for the AI gold rush, invests in the miners, then counts the returns before the quarter’s even over.
Sure, it’s brilliant. But if this is the new business model—chip giant turns early-stage VC turns IPO flipper—then the line between strategic investment and market distortion is looking a little fuzzy.
And if Jensen Huang ever wants to hang up the leather jacket, he might have a very bright future at Tiger Global 2.0.
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Advertiser's disclosures:
¹ The minimum investment is $1,000. This is a paid advertisement for the Boxabl Inc. Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular and related risks at StartEngine’s Boxabl Website.
Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors because it is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. It should only be considered a long-term investment. You must be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid, and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities.
