Financial Mindset

Super Micro Computer CEO Charles Liang spoke out during the company’s fiscal third quarter earnings call to deliver a message. “No one” at the company besides three indicted employees—including cofounder Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw—were involved in what prosecutors have called an elaborate scheme to smuggle servers to China in violation of U.S. export controls, said Liang. The stock rose 18% in after-hours trading. The server manufacturer’s third quarter earning call on Tuesday was the first since Liaw and two other defendants were indicted in a criminal investigation over U.S. export controls and an alleged scheme to smuggle $2.5 billion in servers to China. Michael Staiger, the VP of corporate development, informed analysts at the onset of the quarterly call that the company would focus on financial results during the call’s Q&A portion. Unmoved, analysts started the Q&A with questions about the indictment fallout. Staiger said b...

In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady takes the temperature at Milken. The big leadership story: GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s bid for eBay would upend its nascent turnaround. The markets: Mixed as investors digest new developments in the Iran conflict. Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune . Good morning from the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, where leaders from around the world are talking about the innovation and trends shaping society. For a finance-heavy crowd, the focus is often on money and where it can be deployed to have the most impact. A down day in the markets may have dampened some spirits on site, along with fighting in the Strait of Hormuz , concerns over how the AI revolution plays out, private credit risk, and a sense that the world is being reordered in ways that might not benefit the U.S. With the Beverly Hilton under construction, there were few public places to sit and limited space to network. “This feels...

Four of the largest U.S. tech companies reported earnings Wednesday afternoon, confirming an AI capital expenditure buildout without modern precedent.  Combined, they spent $130.65 billion on capital expenditures in the first three months of 2026—more than three times the inflation-adjusted cost of the Manhattan Project, in a single quarter. They plan to spend nearly $700 billion this year alone, as much as the U.S. government spends on Medicare.  The headline profits suggest that the bet is paying off; Google parent Alphabet’s profit jumped 81% to $62.6 billion last quarter, while Amazon’s net income surged 77% to $30.3 billion and AWS revenue grew 28%. Yet a footnote in Google’s earnings release, and a bullet point under the net-income section of Amazon’s, tells a different story about where those profits came from. Nearly half of Alphabet’s record $62.6 billion profit—about $28.7 billion—”did not come from search ads, ...

On March 31, over a hundred of Baidu’s Apollo Go robotaxis simultaneously froze on the streets of Wuhan. Vehicles stalled on overpasses and elevated roads, trapping passengers for up to two hours. A few weeks later, Beijing suspended all new autonomous driving permits nationwide. The suspension suspension blocked robotaxi companies from adding to their fleets, starting new tests, or expanding to additional cities, according to Bloomberg. In the U.S., meanwhile, some autonomous vehicles are driving into street lights and even into the middle of ongoing crime scenes. In just one month in Austin, Tesla’s robotaxis crashed into a fixed object head on and in reverse, while also hitting trees, poles, buses and trucks. Waymo’s robotaxis are incapable of closing their own doors —and the company has taken to hiring DoorDashers to door dash and close the doors after a passenger gets out. In October 2023, a Cruise AV dragged a pedestrian 20 feet. During the June ...

Vladimir Putin is losing the Russian people as the economy and his war machine go in reverse amid withering Ukrainian attacks. On the economic front, Putin himself recently revealed that GDP contracted in the first two months of the year. And on the Ukraine front, Russian forces suffered a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024. After Russia launched a sudden invasion in 2022, Putin has not only failed to defeat Ukraine, his forces have been unable to take full control of the Donetsk region. “The overall mood is that’s enough already; you’ve been fighting for long enough,” a Russian official told the Washington Post last week on condition of anonymity. “It seems to everyone that it’s been going on for longer than World War II, the Great Patriotic War — and at the same time we can’t even take one region.” With Western military aid and innovations from Ukraine’s now-thriving domestic defense industry, Kyiv has weakened Russia’s econ...

The San Diego Padres have reached an agreement to sell control of the team to an investor group led by Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano. The family of late owner Peter Seidler formally announced the deal Saturday. The sale must still be approved by Major League Baseball. The deal with private equity billionaire Feliciano and his wife took shape last month at  an MLB-record valuation of $3.9 billion . The Padres’ announcement of the deal didn’t give specifics on the members of the investor group or the purchase price. “The Padres are more than a baseball team; they are a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection and belonging,” Jones and Feliciano said in a joint statement. “As life and business partners, and as a family, we are honored to lead this next chapter together. We have worked hard for everything we have achieved, and we have built it together. We see that same spirit in this team and its fans, and we know what it takes to win....

Investing legend Warren Buffett bemoaned the gambling culture that has taken over financial markets while continuing to preach his brand of patience. In an interview with CNBC on Saturday as Berkshire Hathaway held its annual shareholders meeting, he noted that of the 60 years he’s been in business, only five of them were “really juicy” with opportunities. But when there are no good bargains to be found, the “oracle of Omaha” is fine doing nothing. That’s largely been the case for years. While Berkshire has acquired some smaller companies, the lack of mega-deals has sent the conglomerate’s cash pile to nearly $400 billion . Buffett stepped down as CEO at the end of last year, but he remains involved in the investment portfolio—and still doesn’t like the prices that he’s seeing. That’s due in part to investors acting like they’re playing a card game. To be sure, he’s long compared financial markets...