Here’s what you need to know today

• Intel shares jumped 22% after Nvidia announced a $5 billion investment in the US chipmaker, giving it more than 4% of Intel’s shares. One of the biggest winners was the US Government, who just weeks ago, took a 10% stake in Intel. This was Intel’s best day on the share market since 1987. (WSJ)
  
  

• The deal to sell TikTok’s US operations to an American buyer is still not confirmed. US President Trump and Chinese President Xi spoke on the phone on Friday, with Trump reporting the two leaders “made progress”. Reports last week were a consortium led by Oracle were the likely acquirers, with Chinese-owner ByteDance retaining a 19.9% ownership stake. (BBC)
  
  

• Australian telco Optus is being investigated over a technical failure that impacted hundreds of triple-0 emergency calls across Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory. So far the media are linking four deaths to the inability to contact emergency services. (ABC News)
  
  

• Australian software giant Atlassian has made its second acquisition in as many weeks. Atlassian is buying software maker DX to incorporate its developer productivity tools into Atlassian’s product suite. This comes after Atlassian also bought The Browser Company to get into the web browser market. (Capital Brief)
  
  

• Russia violated the airspace of a third NATO country. Over the past few weeks, Russia used drones to enter the airspace of Poland and Romania. We’ve now seen an escalation with 3 Russian fighter jets entering Estonia’s airspace without permission, before being chased away by NATO jets. (NBC)
  
  

• Israel warned it planned to use “unprecedented force” against Hamas in its Gaza City offensive as it urged civilians to leave the area. At the UN, the US blocked a Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire, and reports are that 10 countries, including Britain, Canada and France, plan to formally recognise a Palestinian state. (The Guardian)
  
  

• Australia is also among those countries reportedly considering recognising a Palestinian state at the UN this week. In an open letter, Republican party lawmakers in the US have warned these countries, including Australia, of “punitive measures” if they go ahead with these plans. (ABC News)
  
  

• Days after the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time in 2025, President Trump continued his campaign to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. He has asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court’s ruling that he could not fire Cook. (CNN)
  
  

• President Trump’s $15 billion libel and defamation lawsuit against the New York Times is off to a bad start. The judge called the President’s complaint “decidedly improper and impermissible” and gave his team 28 days to refile. (Axios)

What the…?

The sport of stone skimming has been rocked by a cheating scandal. More than 2,200 people from 27 countries attended the world championships in Easdale, an island off the coast of Scotland.

While competitors are required to use naturally occurring stones for their skimming attempts, several were caught with “suspiciously circular” stones that they later admitted they had doctored.

After dealing with the cheating scandal, Jonathan Jennings became the first American to win the championship, skimming his three stones a cumulative distance of 177 metres. (BBC)

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Nintendo: Up 40% so far in 2025

With Japanese gaming giant Nintendo having a great run so far in 2025, we’re revisiting an early Basis Points episode with Eric Marais, Investment Specialist at Orbis. (Apple | Spotify | YouTube)

In this episode, Eric explained why they were investing in Nintendo. Here’s a sample:

Eric: So today, Nintendo is quite a meaningful position in the Orbis Global Equity Fund, but we built the position in 2023. The reason why I’m giving that context is because I think some things have happened since—they've actually announced their latest console, which is the Nintendo Switch 2.

But at the time that was very much still down the pipeline. It was unclear exactly when it was going to launch or what it might look like. But the reason why it was out of favour, the reason why it attracted us as contrarians, is because the stock had performed incredibly poorly for a very long time.

So it’s done much better recently. But between 2008—the stock’s peak—it took them up until 2024 to exceed their peak again. So that is a long grind.

And those are the kinds of things that we sometimes find interesting. The underlying reason why the company performed so poorly is really just its own fundamentals. And that leads us to maybe the biggest risk with Nintendo and very much the market’s view.

Where the market focus is, and that’s that the company has never in its history strung together two successful generations of hardware. So the Switch that’s out today has been hugely successful. But prior to the Switch, the company had the Nintendo Wii U, which any gamers who are listening in will know exactly what I mean. That console was a complete disaster, a complete, complete failure.

And so over the last few years, you’re kind of in this window where everyone knew with the Switch getting older and older that they’d be coming up with something new. So now you’re in this most risky part of the business’s kind of history because now they’ve got to come up with a new generation of hardware.

What are they going to do? Will they finally kind of break that pattern or will it be the same thing?

Want to watch the full episode with Eric? Check it out on the Basis Points YouTube channel:

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