Good morning. Andrew here. I only got the chance to speak with Steve Jobs twice during his lifetime. This morning, on Apple’s 50th anniversary, I’m thinking of him. Apple’s success was never preordained. Remember that the company nearly went bankrupt in the 1990s, before Jobs returned after a decade-long exile. But while we tend to celebrate founders — especially those like Jobs with powerful visions and intensity — the most underappreciated business story of the past decade may be what Tim Cook did to grow Apple’s business so successfully after Jobs’s death in 2011. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Two to three weeks?Markets are largely breathing a sigh of relief this morning, as investors took hope that President Trump was preparing to wind down U.S. strikes on Iran within — by his estimation — “two weeks, maybe three.” But political and business leaders around the world continue to worry that the long-term consequences of the fighting and a potentially sudden end to U.S. operations may last a lot longer. Cautious optimism is dominating the markets. Brent crude, the international benchmark for oil, briefly fell below $100 a barrel this morning, while S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite futures were both in the green and the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury notes was down, too. Still, both Brent and the 10-year are ticking up from session lows. Trump signaled that he wanted to wrap up the fighting. “We will be leaving very soon,” he told reporters yesterday, and the administration said he would address the nation tonight. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also suggested that Washington was close to achieving a key goal: preventing Tehran from being able to build a nuclear weapon. “We can see the finish line,” Rubio said on Fox News. That push to quickly end the war comes after weeks of worries about global energy supplies, which sent oil prices surging — AAA just reported that the average U.S. price for gas is $4.06 a gallon, up 36 percent from a month ago — and Trump’s approval poll numbers to new lows. Many questions remain unanswered, though:
Trump himself is still adding to global uncertainty. He told The Telegraph that he was again weighing withdrawing the U.S. from NATO, citing alliance members’ refusal to commit military forces to reopen the strait. He also hasn’t ruled out potential escalation, including by putting American troops on the ground to try to seize Kharg Island, a key Iranian oil export hub. Up next: Trump is scheduled to deliver “an important update” on the war in a national address today at 9 p.m. Eastern.
OpenAI adds $12 billion to its record-breaking fund-raising round. The artificial intelligence giant announced that it had raised $3 billion from individual investors, via banks, for the first time, alongside money from new institutions including Andreessen Horowitz, D.E. Shaw Ventures and the Emirati firm MGX. In other A.I. news, Anthropic accidentally released part of the source code for its Claude Code tool, letting slip potential new features, and Nvidia said it had invested $2 billion in the chipmaker Marvell Technology. Nike takes a blow from the war in Iran. Shares in the sportswear titan were down more than 9 percent in premarket trading after the company gave a lackluster sales outlook that reflected struggles in the Middle East and Europe and as well as a wider slowdown in China. The results will weigh on the turnaround led by Elliott Hill, Nike’s C.E.O. “This is complex work, and parts of it are taking longer than I’d like,” he told analysts yesterday. Warren Buffett goes quiet on Bill Gates. Buffett told CNBC yesterday that he hadn’t spoken to the Microsoft co-founder since the “whole thing” around the Jeffrey Epstein files “was unveiled.” (Buffett said that he didn’t “want to be in a position where I know things” or “be called as a witness” for any Epstein proceedings.) Asked if he was still good friends with Gates, Buffett shared fond words about their personal relationship, but declined to say more beyond that. The war’s effect on aviationStocks in Asia joined the global market rally this morning. But that has done little to alleviate wider concerns within the region, whose energy needs have been hit especially hard by the war in Iran. Fuel rations, orders to work from home, setbacks to business travel and more threaten to dent economic activity across the continent. Even if the war ends soon, its fallout may lead to similar disruptions around the world, Grady McGregor and Bernhard Warner report. The data point to watch: jet fuel prices, which have more than doubled over the past month in Asia and Oceania to $208 a barrel this week, according to the International Air Transport Association. Thailand grounded much of its fishing fleet to reduce fuel consumption. And the Philippines last week declared a national energy emergency. Airlines across Asia have been cutting back or ditching flights on all but “their busiest and most profitable routes,” Rory Johnston, an independent oil analyst who writes a commodities newsletter, told DealBook. Similar price shocks could spread to Europe and to parts of North America, Johnston added. Europe could run into jet fuel shortages as soon as next month, Bloomberg reports, citing unnamed sources. That’s more likely if shipments of kerosene, a key component, remain disrupted by Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Sky-high airfares and route disruptions are the first thing travelers will encounter. Fuel costs can account for as much as 30 percent of an airline’s operating cost, and many carriers have begun to adjust. “We have to raise prices to deal with higher fuel prices,” Scott Kirby, the C.E.O. of United Airlines, said last week. Cathay Pacific Airways, based in Hong Kong, has already raised fuel surcharges, and Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways are slated to do so as well. United, Air New Zealand and the Scandinavian carrier SAS have announced capacity cuts and rate hikes, according to Reuters. The longer the war goes on, “there’s no escaping” the global hit to the travel sector, Johnston said.
Apple and the trillion-dollar computerApple began life in 1976 as a three-person company selling one computer model, the Apple I, for $666.66 (or just north of $3,800 in today’s money). But that’s a generous description: The Apple I was sold as a circuit board, and needed a monitor, keyboard, power supply and more to actually function. Exactly 50 years later, Apple has more than 150,000 employees around the globe. It has also created perhaps the most lucrative consumer product in history: the iPhone, which Steve Jobs memorably introduced in 2007 as a gadget “that changes everything.” Jobs wasn’t wrong.
The iPhone, a meticulously designed and precisely engineered mini-supercomputer, ushered in a new era of technology. And it has been a profit gusher for Apple, generating by the company’s own accounting about $2.2 trillion in revenue from 2007 to September 2025. Its success has made Apple one of the most valuable publicly traded enterprises on the planet, with a market value of $3.7 trillion. Your thoughts on stock trading by elected officialsYesterday, Andrew asked readers for their opinions on a question he’s been pondering for years: Why haven’t politicians acted decisively to restrict stock trading for themselves, their staff and anyone handling market-moving information? Sure, elected officials may be serving their own interests. But why don’t voters seem to care enough to hold them accountable and force a change? The issue was on Andrew’s mind because of a report in The Financial Times, denied by the Pentagon, that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s broker had considered buying a defense exchange-traded fund shortly before the strikes on Iran began. That news followed previous reports of trading around some of President Trump’s big decisions and announcements over the past year that experts saw as suspicious. The topic of trading by government officials struck a nerve with readers, to say the least. Our inbox was flooded with replies. Here are some of your responses, which have been condensed and edited for clarity.
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