This was another winning week for the Fab Five (+$228 billion wk/wk, +$3.21 trillion year-to-date) with each stock (except Apple) posting meaningful gains. Of greatest interest is that Meta/ Facebook is firmly above $300/ share and within 20% of their all-time high ($379) – who would have thought that last October.

For those of you who have not been tracking, this has not been a good week for Lina Khan, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). On Tuesday, a San Francisco federal judge denied the FTC’s attempt to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and late last night, the Ninth Circuit denied the FTC’s appeal that sought to temporarily stop the merger. Assuming Microsoft can reach a deal with the UK Competition and Markets Authority (probable, but not certain as of the time of this Brief – see this Financial Times article), the merger will close next Tuesday. Good summary of events from CNBC here and a great profile of Khan from the Wall Street Journal here.

Speaking of FTC targets, Amazon broke many records during last week’s Prime Days event. Their press release summarizing results is here, and Bloomberg’s more sanguine summary of the event is here. The Patterson household participated in the festivities, but, as the Bloomberg article articulates, there were no electronics purchases this year.

Lastly, the Wall Street Journal has a very lengthy summary of legacy telco usage of lead sheathing in their networks (articles here and here). This is a serious matter, but, as the articles state, removing some of the cables might create more lead dust than leaving them in place (which in many/ most cases is under roads in urban centers. We will have more commentary on their investigative reporting in next week’s Brief.

Enjoy the sizzling summer weekend! File is below.