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Trump cancelled Iran talks, gold blew past $4,600, Hollywood is suing itself, and Meta just hired Wall Street’s most powerful… phone book?

Another perfectly normal week to kick off 2026.

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Paramount Skydance just went full scorched-earth on Warner Bros. Discovery, filing a lawsuit in Delaware and launching a proxy fight after WBD's board rejected its hostile takeover bid for the eighth time. CEO David Ellison is demanding financial details about WBD's $83 billion deal with Netflix, specifically how the company valued its cable networks spinoff and why it keeps insisting Netflix's $27.72 per share is better than Paramount's $30 all-cash offer.

The whole mess started when WBD agreed to sell its streaming platform HBO Max and film studio Warner Bros. to Netflix, while spinning off its legacy cable channels into a separate company called Discovery Global. Paramount has made eight bids now, each time arguing the sale process was rigged, and each time getting told to kick rocks. WBD's response? "Paramount has yet to raise the price or address the numerous and obvious deficiencies of its offer." Translation: show us more money or stop wasting our time.

The kicker is that Paramount's backing includes a $40.4 billion personal guarantee from Larry Ellison (Oracle co-founder and fourth-richest person on Earth), but WBD isn't impressed. They're pointing to Paramount's junk credit rating, negative free cash flows, and the fact that the deal would saddle them with $87 billion in debt. Meanwhile, Netflix is already working with regulators to close its acquisition. Paramount is now nominating its own slate of directors for WBD's board and trying to force a shareholder vote on the cable network spinoff. Either this is the world's most expensive temper tantrum or Ellison sees something everyone else is missing—like maybe the opportunity to purchase CNN and fire some hosts.

Meta just poached one of the most connected executives on Wall Street, naming Dina Powell McCormick as the company's new president and vice chairman. Powell McCormick spent decades at Goldman Sachs running their sovereign wealth fund business and building relationships with literally every major pool of capital on the planet. She also advised two US presidents, including Trump, who posted "great choice by Mark Z!!!" on Truth Social after the announcement.

The hire signals a major shift in Meta's strategy. After spending billions on AI talent and shelling out nearly $15 billion to Scale AI alone, the company may now be looking to tap outside capital and strike the kind of strategic partnerships that rivals like Nvidia, OpenAI, and xAI have been aggressively pursuing in the Middle East. Powell McCormick will focus on securing partnerships and overseeing Meta's $600 billion infrastructure buildout over the next decade, which sounds like code for "we need sovereign wealth fund money, and she knows everyone who controls it."

Wall Street loves the move. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon called her "a better banker with more relationships than many big finance CEOs," while Blackstone's Stephen Schwarzman said she's "enormously successful wherever she goes." Powell McCormick immigrated from Egypt at age six without speaking English, rose to partner at Goldman, and played a key role in laying the groundwork for the Abraham Accords. Now she's tasked with making sure Meta doesn't fall behind in the AI arms race because it ran out of cash or friends. Smart hire or desperate move? Probably both.

Analysis provided by ​altindex.com​.

Remember to always DYOR.

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Current price: $59.87
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Current price: $26.34
Target price: $32.44

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Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake of Invested Inc.