Axios

Tesla deliveries slipped again last quarter compared to a year ago amid growing competition and uneven demand for EVs.

Why it matters: The company still holds the scepter as the top-seller of EVs in the world, but its grip is loosening.

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk today took a shot across the bow from President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders on their pricing of popular GLP-1 drugs.

Driving the news: In an op-ed in USA Today, Biden and Sanders took specific aim at Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Wegovy and Eli Lilly's Mounjaro, threatening to take action if the drugmakers didn't lower prices for the popular weight loss and Type-2 diabetes drugs.

💊 The FDA approved Eli Lilly's Alzheimer's drug donanemab. (CNBC)

🍏 Apple App Store head Phil Schiller was chosen for an observer role on OpenAI's board. (Bloomberg)

American Airlines is taking a flyer on hydrogen-electric engines.

• The airline entered into a conditional purchase agreement with hydrogen fuel cell aviation startup ZeroAvia for 100 of them, intended to power regional jets with near-zero in-flight emissions.

Why it matters: American sees ZeroAvia's engines as a potential game-changer for powering its regional flights.

• This is its first engine order from ZeroAvia, in which the airline has been investing since 2022.

Zoom in: ZeroAvia is developing hydrogen-electric, or fuel cell-powered, engines for commercial aircraft that it says can reduce in-flight emissions to close to zero, other than water vapor.

Crypto markets don't ever close, but the end of the weekend trader is nigh.

• The arrival of spot bitcoin ETFs is making crypto trading hours look more traditional.

By the numbers: As a proportion of all trading, weekend volumes have fallen to an all-time low, accounting for just about 16% of cumulative trading in bitcoin for the first six months of the year, according to Kaiko Research's Adam Morgan.

Speaking of races — there's a stablecoin race afoot in Europe, where the incumbent has a more dubious hold on the market.

The intrigue: Europe's Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework has gone into effect, but only one of the two major issuers behind dollar-pegged stablecoins (Circle) has received a license to operate there.

The big picture: That market looks like Circle's to win, though it is still far behind Tether.

• Circle's USDC is the second largest U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin, with roughly $32 billion in circulation. Tether's USDT has $112 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

A ranking of the most viewed coins on the Solana blockchain on at least one crypto data site shows "anti-establishment sentiment" trending.

• Between the lines: Meme coins are in.

Driving the news: So says CoinMarketCap, which ranked the top coins by page views on the site across various categories for June.

Zoom in: There are various Trump-inspired meme coins, but MAGA on the Solana ecosystem got the most eyeballs, outpacing dog-inspired BONK and even the Roaring Kitty-inspired GME (not to be confused with the stock).

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said he is not focused on the possibility that former President Trump might be re-elected and could chip away at the central bank's political independence.

Why it matters: When Trump was in office, he publicly lambasted Powell, whom he appointed — once suggesting the central bank chief was a bigger "enemy" than China's Xi Jinping.

Boeing is bringing key supplier Spirit AeroSystems back under its wing.

Why it matters: Moving the fuselage maker in-house — Boeing sold the business nearly two decades ago — is seen as a necessary step to correct quality-control issues that have plagued both companies.

Add Chewy to the list of meme stocks to watch.

Driving the news: Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, revealed a 6.6% stake in the company in an SEC filing today.

• The stock surged at first before closing lower by — intriguingly — 6.6% on the day.

The big picture: Gill stirred volatility in the stock last week when he posted a photo of a cartoon dog with a blue background in a shade similar to Chewy's logo.

Big Tech fueled the market during the second quarter, pushing inflation worries and rate speculation aside.

Why it matters: Without the gains from Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet and Broadcom, the broad market would have fallen in Q2, Morningstar notes.

Stunning stats: Morningstar's U.S. Market Index, which measures the performance of the top 97% of the investable universe by market cap, gained 3.5%.

• Nvidia alone contributed 1.6 percentage points of that return.
• The stock added roughly $812 billion in market cap during the quarter and joined the $3 trillion club for the first time on June 5.

The big picture: Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet were the next biggest contributors.

Some good news for the industry came out of the courts Friday, in the case that the SEC brought a year ago against the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance.

• A federal judge allowed most parts of the case to proceed, but in doing so rejected the idea that a cryptocurrency token can be, in and of itself, an "investment contract" under the Supreme Court's Howey Test.

Why it matters: The judgment could allow for some tokens, at least, to live outside the SEC's purview, which would mean that normal people could hold them and use them in the course of daily business.

Between the lines: "In the Court's view, then, the SEC's suggestion that the token is 'the embodiment of the investment contract,' ... as opposed to the subject of the investment contract, muddied the issues before the Court," U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson wrote.

The Open Network, the blockchain closely associated with mega-messaging app Telegram, is rapidly moving up the ranks of chains hosting decentralized finance activity.

The big picture: In terms of funds entrusted to various apps on the blockchain (the term of art is "total value locked"), The Open Network (TON) came from almost nothing early this year to join the ranks of chains like Avalanche and Polygon that have years in the market.

Prediction markets turned quickly against Biden after last week's debate.

By the numbers: Since Friday, bets on the president winning the general election dropped further, now at about 20% on Polymarket.

• On Friday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom was seen as the most likely Democratic nominee after Biden, but now Vice President Kamala Harris is strongly favored, with a 12% likelihood of replacing the president.

"Inside Out 2" crossed $1 billion in worldwide box office sales this weekend, making it the first movie of the year to reach the milestone.

Why it matters: It's the fastest animated picture to gross $1 billion — reaching the marker in 19 days, according to Disney.

The soft landing seems to have stuck, inflation has been frustratingly persistent, rate cuts will be slower to arrive than many thought, and small cracks are showing up in the growth outlook.

The big picture: That is where the U.S. economy stands as we pass the midpoint of 2024 — a year in which things have not gone quite according to plan, but the overall balance of conditions is, for now, favorable for both workers and investors.

The U.S. just set sail into a new era of climate and environmental policy.

Why it matters: A Supreme Court ruling Friday constrains what the Beltway's vast bureaucracies can do without detailed instruction from Congress.

A new grassroots effort to propel innovation in American manufacturing is flexing its muscle across the Rust Belt and the Beltway.

Why it matters: Decades of globalization have left U.S. industry dependent on foreign supply chains — and at risk of falling behind China and other countries.