Final Tally: Netflix Buys Hollywood’s Soul for $72B… Donnie Politics Waves His Red Flag

Hide the money y’all… there’s poor people ’round here…

That’s essentially what Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings said after swaggering into the Warner Bros. auction, walking right past David “Daddy’s Money” Ellison, and throwing down a $72 billion bag of money just to own the rights to hear Tony Soprano mutter “whaddya gonna do?” and walk out with Game of Thrones tucked under his arm.

And just like that, the biggest bidding war Hollywood’s seen since ESPN drop-kicked TNT out of Inside the NBA… is over. Done. Buried. The spoils are going to the one company nobody actually thought would fork up the cash to pull this off.

Word of advice, David: next time, maybe make your bed, do your chores, and Dad might bump your allowance by a couple billion. Because Paramount Skydance really thought they had this in the bag… they fired off three bids, the last being $30 a share, all cash, plus a $5 billion breakup fee. They wanted everything… and walked away holding absolutely nothing.

Oh, and get this, to show they were serious about winning Netflix pretty much showed up with a prenup written in blood.

They agreed to a $5.8 billion reverse breakup fee, their way of saying: “If regulators try to blow this up, we’re STILL writing a monster check, relax.” And if Warner Bros. gets cold feet and ghosts them? That’s a $2.8 billion penalty. 

The stock tanked nearly 10% when the news dropped (classic “they spent how much” energy) then crawled back to -2% once investors remembered Netflix owns half of the entire showbiz now. Also doesn’t help that Donnie Politics is reportedly not happy about the deal (go figure, he’s besties with Larry Ellison).

As for the broader market, it somehow strung together its fourth straight green day… even though nothing about today’s action felt “green.” The S&P 500 (.22%), Nasdaq (.26%), and Dow (.32%) chipped higher mostly because traders are still hopeful the latest inflation data can get JPow to pull out the scissors. 

The big print (core PCE at 2.8%, slightly cooler than the 2.9% estimate) didn’t necessarily “wow” anyone, but it did whisper gently into Jerome Powell’s ear, “Hey big boy, maybe next week’s rate cut wouldn’t be the worst idea.”

Inflation landing perfectly at 0.2% paired with a hotter-than-expected consumer sentiment reading gave the indexes enough emotional support to stay green. Add in a labor market that looks sick but not terminal, and traders have gone all-in on an 87% shot that Powell does the deed on Wednesday.

What’s crazy is how contradictory the labor market looks. Challenger reported 71,000 layoffs in November (the worst since 2022) but weekly jobless claims just fell to their lowest level since that same year. 

So the economy is both firing people and hiring people simultaneously, which feels about right for 2025. Economists call it a “gradual cooling.” The rest of us call it “someone’s lying.”

Meanwhile, Sofi, FinTwit’s favorite banking stock that can do no wrong, decided today was the perfect moment to announce a $1.5 billion stock offering. Investors heard “yeah, we’re broke” and immediately sent shares down 6%.

And somebody bring a stretcher for Tesla. Shares dipped again after Elon launched cheaper versions of the Model 3 and Model Y in Europe, trying to plug the holes as Chinese competitors carve up his market share. 

BYD is exploding with 207% growth, SAIC is cruising at +46%, and buyers are continuing to move away from buying Teslas. Michael Burry is almost certainly in his office cackling like a supervillain right now.

And say a prayer for all the crypto degens… just as things looked on the up and up again… Bitcoin took a 4% swan dive below $90K as it continues struggling to reclaim the $92K level traders have been treating like a sacred pilgrimage point. 

It’s still licking its wounds from the October crash, but Fundstrat’s Sean Farrell insists the setup is turning bullish again, citing ETF flows, derivatives positioning, and liquidity trends. Whether that actually matters depends on one man… Jerome Powell, stepping up to the mic on Wednesday. 

Lastly, make sure to check the official Stocks.News app (yes we have an app) to see our weekly recap for the Stock Prophet Watchlist. If you haven’t yet, go here to download the app.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Netflix, Tesla, and Bitcoin as mentioned in the article.