Ed Yardeni Says No Recession. Iran Says It's Ready to Deal. Apple's About to Drop iPhone 17e

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Wall Street's most-watched bull just doubled down. Ed Yardeni raised his "Roaring 2020s" odds from 50% to 60% and set his S&P 500 year-end target at 7,700. His math is straightforward: $350 earnings per share in 2027, times a 22x multiple, gets you there.

And the data backs him up. Real GDP? Record high. Corporate earnings? Record. Consumer spending? Still running warm.

But here's the part worth paying attention to. Tech and communication services now make up nearly 45% of the entire S&P 500. That's a lot of eggs in one basket and history isn't kind to that kind of concentration.

Yardeni's quiet suggestion: trim some mega-cap tech exposure and rotate into financials, industrials, and health care before the AI trade gets too crowded.

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Here's something that didn't get nearly enough attention this week.

Peter Navarro said AI companies should cover "all of the costs" of their data centers: electricity, grid upgrades, water usage. All of it. No passing it on to ratepayers.

Why does that matter? Because AI data centers are projected to consume 260 TWh of U.S. electricity by 2026, up from 183 TWh in 2024. That's not a rounding error. That's enough electricity to power tens of millions of homes, and it's quietly pushing utility bills higher for regular people.

Anthropic already made their move. They pledged to cover 100% of grid upgrade costs tied to their facilities. Smart positioning or genuine accountability? Probably both.

Either way, expect others to follow. And if they don't, expect pressure campaigns that make headlines.

For investors, this is a real cost-structure risk for Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. But utilities serving data center corridors? Still interesting. Demand isn't disappearing — it's just being regulated.

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Two of the biggest names in entertainment are fighting over the same prize, and Warner Bros.' board just started asking whether they're talking to the right buyer.

Here's the scoreboard. Paramount's all-cash offer: $30/share, or roughly $108.4 billion including debt. Netflix bid: $27.75/share. Paramount also offered to cover the $2.8 billion breakup fee if Warner walks away from Netflix, plus a "ticking fee" of $0.25/share per quarter until closing, basically a financial incentive to switch.

What's on the table: Batman. Harry Potter. Game of Thrones. HBO. DC Comics. One of the richest content libraries ever assembled.

Both bidders have signaled they'll raise their offers. The shareholder tender deadline is February 20, this Thursday.

If you hold $WBD ( ▼ 2.19% ), $NFLX ( ▲ 13.77% ), or $PSKY ( ▲ 20.84% ), that date matters. If you don't hold any of them, whoever wins this thing reshapes the entire streaming landscape, with real ripple effects for Disney+ and Amazon.

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A second round of US-Iran nuclear talks is confirmed for Tuesday in Geneva, and Iran came to the table with something new.

Enrichment caps, previously a non-starter for Tehran, are now on the table. They ask in return: lift financial sanctions. It's not a done deal, not even close. But the shift in tone is real.

The backdrop: two U.S. aircraft carriers are in the region. Trump says he prefers diplomacy. Netanyahu says nothing short of full dismantlement is acceptable. Everyone has leverage. Nobody has a deal, yet.

A deal that allows Iran to export oil freely again could add meaningful supply to global markets and push crude prices lower. Good for consumers. A headwind for your energy stocks. 

Watch crude futures before you touch any energy position.

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After JD Vance's speech last year rattled European allies and made headlines for all the wrong reasons, the bar in Munich this Saturday was low. Rubio cleared it, and then some.

He called the U.S. a "child of Europe." He pitched a "new Western century" built on reindustrialization, AI leadership, critical mineral supply chains, and competing with China for influence in the Global South. He backed NATO but made clear Europe needs to carry more of its own military weight. He got a standing ovation. EU chief Kaja Kallas called it "reassuring." Von der Leyen said she was "very much reassured."

But read between the lines, because that's where the real story is.

Russia barely got a mention in his prepared remarks. Ukraine only came up in Q&A, where Rubio acknowledged the U.S. still doesn't know whether Putin genuinely wants peace. Zelenskyy, who was also in the room, said he felt "a little bit of pressure" from Trump, and noted that concession talk keeps getting directed at Ukraine, not at Russia.

So the speech was warm. The underlying tensions? Still very much there.

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Analyst says Apple has five or more new products ready to ship "over the next several weeks."

The lineup: a low-cost MacBook (A18 Pro chip, around $599, think iMac-style colors), an M5 MacBook Air, M5 Pro and M5 Max MacBook Pros, and new Mac displays.

But the product worth watching most? The iPhone 17e, expected as soon as this week, and it's the first iPhone to run Apple's own C1 cellular modem instead of Qualcomm's. 

Tom’s Guide has previously written about rumors that the release will be Thursday, February 19, exactly one year after the release of the iPhone 16e. 

Apple retail staff are already reporting inventory dry-outs on the current iPhone SE and iPad Air. That's the classic signal. Something's coming soon.

Product launches this big historically move $AAPL. But don't sleep on the downstream plays: chipmakers, accessory brands, and developers building for new hardware categories all tend to ride the wave.