Security services searched the home of one of Ukraine’s most prominent billionaires on Wednesday, moving against a figure once seen as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s sponsor in what the authorities called a war-time anti-corruption purge.

The action, days before a summit with the European Union, appears to reflect determination by Kyiv to demonstrate that it can be a steward of billions of dollars in Western aid and shed a reputation as one of the world’s most corrupt states.

It came as Kyiv has secured huge pledges of weapons from the West in recent weeks offering new capabilities – the latest expected this week to include rockets from the United States that would nearly double the firing range of Ukrainian forces.

Photographs circulating on social media appeared to show Ihor Kolomoiskiy dressed in a sweatsuit and looking on in the presence of an SBU security service officer at his home.

The SBU said it had uncovered the embezzlement of more than $1 billion at Ukraine’s biggest oil company, Ukrnafta, and its biggest refiner, Ukrtatnafta. Kolomoiskiy, who has long denied wrongdoing, once held stakes in both firms, which Zelenskiy ordered seized by the state in November under martial law.

Separate raids were carried out at the tax office, and the home of Arsen Avakov, who led Ukraine’s police force as interior minister from 2014-2021. The SBU said it was cracking down on “people whose actions harm the security of the state in various spheres” and promised more details in coming days.

“Every criminal who has the audacity to harm Ukraine, especially in the conditions of war, must clearly understand that we will put handcuffs on his hands,” Ukraine’s security service chief Vasyl Malyuk was quoted as saying on the SBU Telegram channel.

The prosecutor general’s office said the top management of Ukrtatnafta had been notified it was under suspicion, as were a former energy minister, a former deputy defence minister and other officials.

Kolomoiskiy, who faces a fraud case in the United States, has been at the centre of corruption allegations and court disputes for years that Western donors have said must be resolved for Kyiv to win aid.

Zelenskiy, who first came to fame as the star of a sitcom on Kolomoiskiy’s TV station, has long promised to rid Ukraine of so-called oligarchs, but had faced accusations that he was unable to move decisively against his former sponsor.

In an address overnight before the raids, he alluded to new anti-corruption measures in time for Friday’s summit, at which Ukraine is expected to seek firm steps towards joining the EU.

“We are preparing new reforms in Ukraine. Reforms that will change the social, legal and political reality in many ways, making it more human, transparent and effective,” he said, promising to reveal the details soon.

Ukrainian forces which recaptured swathes of territory from Russian troops in the second half of 2022 have seen their advance stall since November. Kyiv says the key to regaining the initiative is securing advanced Western weaponry.

Two U.S. officials said a new $2 billion package of military aid to be announced as soon as this week would for the first time include Ground Launched Small Diameter Bombs (GLSDB), a new weapon designed by Boeing. (BA.N)

The cheap gliding missiles can strike targets more than 150 km (90 miles) away, a dramatic increase over the 80 km range of the rockets fired by HIMARS systems which changed the face of the war when Washington sent them last summer.

That would put all of the Russian-occupied territory on Ukraine’s mainland, as well as parts of the Crimea peninsula seized by Moscow in 2014, within range of Kyiv’s forces.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the arrival of longer range U.S. weapons would escalate the conflict.

Western countries pledged scores of advanced main battle tanks for the first time last week, a breakthrough in support aimed at giving Kyiv the capability to recapture occupied territory this year.

But the arrival of the new weapons is still months away, and in the meantime, Russia has gained momentum on the battlefield, announcing advances north and south of the city of Bakhmut, its main target for months.

Kyiv disputes many of those claims and Reuters could not independently verify the full situation, but the locations of reported fighting clearly indicate incremental Russian advances.

Troops were fighting building to building in Bakhmut for gains of barely 100 metres (yards) a night, and the city was coming under constant Russian shelling, a soldier in a Ukrainian unit of Belarusian volunteers told Reuters from inside the city.

Ukraine’s general staff said late on Tuesday its forces had come under fire in Bakhmut and the villages of Klishchiivka and Kurdyumivka on its southern approaches.

South of Bakhmut, Russia has also launched a major new offensive this week on Vuhledar, a longstanding Ukrainian-held bastion at the junction of the southern and eastern front lines. Kyiv says its forces have so far held there.

The infusion of Western military and financial aid creates new pressure on Zelenskiy to demonstrate his government can clean up Ukraine.

Last week, he purged more than a dozen senior officials following a series of scandals and graft allegations in the biggest shakeup of Ukraine’s leadership since the invasion.

Following Wednesday’s raids, the parliamentary leader of Zelenskiy’s Servant of the People party, David Arakhamia, wrote on Telegram: “The country will change during the war. If someone is not ready for change, then the state itself will come and help them change.”

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Months after Donald Trump launched his “2024 campaign” it’s now obvious to everyone that no such campaign exists. There have been no campaign events. There is no semblance of a campaign staff. Trump almost never appears in public, and doesn’t even bother to use his reinstated Twitter account. There is essentially no media coverage of the “Trump 2024” campaign at this point because there is no campaign.

It’s becoming painfully obvious to everyone out there that Trump isn’t really running for anything, and that this is all just an attempt at raising and pocketing money, while telling himself that being a candidate will somehow magically protect him from the criminal justice system fate he’s facing.

When even the ratings-hungry media isn’t bothering to play along with the “Trump 2024” narrative anymore, it means Trump is in real trouble. So now he’s holding the bare minimum number of “campaign rallies” just so the media will spend a few news cycles portraying him as if he were an actual candidate, so he can keep up the illusion that his “2024 campaign” exists. It’s all just a joke at this point.

What’s particularly interesting is that Donald Trump always loved holding campaign rallies. Rambling to his adoring base, while they cheered on his every inane word, seemed to be the only aspect of politics that he enjoyed. Yet in spite of the obviously profitable nature of such rallies, Trump has held very few of them in the two years since he was booted from office. Since announcing his 2024 “campaign” he’s been even more hesitant to hold rallies. The media should be asking why.

When Trump announced his imaginary 2024 campaign, at a time when everyone in the media knew it was phony, it was bad enough that the entire media played along and pretended it was real. But now that Trump has spent the past few months doing absolutely nothing and proving by default that there’s no 2024 campaign, the media should be loudly calling out the fact that no such campaign ever did emerge. The media should be pointing to the fact that Trump sounds increasingly confused and senile in the rare appearances he has made, and it should be asking if his handlers are trying to hide him for fear everyone will see how far gone he is. The media should also be asking if Trump’s lawyers are hiding him for fear he’ll keep saying incriminating things ahead of his indictment.

Instead the media has failed to do its job entirely, and instead seems relieved that Trump is finally doing the bare minimum to keep the “Trump 2024” narrative viable. This means the media gets to keep milking that narrative for ratings for awhile longer.

What’s curious is why the media is even still bothering. At this point the Trump 2024 narrative is barely still intact, fewer people are interested in it than ever, and it’s not a ratings-friendly storyline. One would think that the media could get far better ratings by focusing on the fact that Trump’s criminal indictment in Georgia is “imminent” (per the District Attorney), and that Trump’s federal indictment appears to be nearing as well. Old media habits die hard. But you’d think the media would figure out that at this late stage of the game it can get more ratings out of Trump simply by honestly covering his downfall.

The post The “Trump 2024” campaign is in tatters appeared first on Palmer Report.

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Cathie Wood.

Photo by Marco Bello/Getty Images

• Cathie Wood’s flagship Ark Invest fund just notched its best month ever as tech stocks bounce back.
• The famed money manager’s Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) logged a gain of about 28% for January. 
• A handful of stocks in ARKK’s portfolio led the win, including Tesla, Spotify and Roku. 

Cathie Wood’s flagship exchange-traded Ark Innovation fund just notched its best month ever as tech stocks like its favored Tesla make a strong comeback.

The famed money manager’s Ark Innovation ETF (ARKK) rose 3.7% on Tuesday to deliver an almost 28% gain for January — though it’s still down 47% on a year ago. The gain follows two low-performing years for the exchange-traded fund, which dropped 69% in 2022 and 21% in 2021.

The major US equity indexes all logged losses for 2022 as the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest-rate hikes, inflationary pressures and recession concerns weighed on stocks. The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 33% for the year as investors shunned riskier assets. 

Wood has criticised the Fed for going overboard with its interest-rate campaign, saying the US central bank is making a mistake with its monetary policy and warning it could spark harmful deflation.

Now investors are opening up to tech-heavy bets like ARKK again as inflation cools, which could prompt the Fed to ease up on its interest rate hikes. The Nasdaq itself is up 10.7% since the start of this year.

Wood, who’s been a Tesla advocate for years, has loaded up on shares of Elon Musk’s automaker in recent weeks, plowing in more than $19 million in January even after the EV maker missed its delivery targets. 

For January, Tesla was the second-best performing stock on the S&P 500 with a 41% monthly rise — a comeback that marks a dramatic U-turn from a nightmarish 2022, when the EV-maker’s stock tumbled 64%. But better-than-expected earnings and hopes the Fed will soften its monetary policy have helped fuel the rebound. 

Other stocks in ARKK’s portfolio leading the win were Spotify and Roku, respectively up about 43% and 41% year to date.

Drag performer MD Hunter, whose stage name is Athena Sinclair, testifies before a state Senate panel as state Sen. Gary Stubblefield, left, listens, at the Arkansas Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2023.

Andrew DeMillo/Associated Press

• A GOP Arkansas bill targeting drag is so confusing it may not even apply to most drag performances, according to a constitutional expert.
• If enacted, the bill would classify drag performances as adult-oriented businesses.
• According to an Arkansas drag queen, the bill would severely impact the LGBTQ+ community. 

Arkansas Republicans proposed a bill that would classify drag performances as “adult-oriented businesses” earlier this month, another example of a nationwide wave of anti-drag and anti-trans legislation pushed by GOP lawmakers. 

But the bill, SB43, is so confusing it may not even apply to most drag shows, UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh said. 

If enacted, it would classify a drag performances and places that host them as “adult-oriented” — like adult video stores and strip clubs. This would restrict where in public drag can be performed and who can attend a drag performance. 

SB43 also features a section about intending to appeal to the “prurient interest,” a term not defined in the bill. According to Volokh, it’s clearly defined in obscenity law. 

“It’s one of the prongs essentially of the three-prong obscenity test,” Volokh said. “And it means a shameful or morbid interest in sex or excretion and sex in the sense of sexual activity.”

But it’s also a relatively narrow term. “It has to be, essentially in some respect, erotic,” he said, for it to meet the standards of “prurient interest.”

“The typical drag performance, this law properly applied, that is to say, applied with an understanding of the legal meaning of prurient interest, would not cover them,” Volokh said.

Drag performances have a long cultural and political history that is more often focused on community and celebration of expression, Insider’s Yelena Dhazahova previously reported. While gender and sexuality may play a role in some drag shows, it’s not always the case. 

SB43 — which was first proposed in the state’s senate and later passed and sent to the state House of Representatives — is also confusing because of its shifting language.

The original bill defines a drag performance as when one or more performers “Exhibit a gender identity that is different from the performer’s gender assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other accessories that are traditionally worn by members of and are meant to exaggerate the gender identity of the performer’s opposite sex” while performing. 

The latest version of the bill, available January 30, does not include that section. According to an amendment released on January 27, those lines were substituted with a section that drag performances are defined as when one or more performers “Exaggerates sexual aspects of the masculine or feminine body for entertainment purposes” while performing. 

The Arkansas Bureau of Legislative Research did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on why the bill was amended.

To Volokh, this new line is vague enough to “breed confusion.”

“In normal context, it’s hard to for me to see what exaggerating sexual aspects of a body for entertainment purposes means. That’s not a legally well-defined term,” he said. 

It’s so confusing, it could be more likely to apply to a strip club performance than a drag performance but even then, Volokh said, it has to feature exaggerated sexual aspects and appeal to the prurient interest. 

Arkansas drag queen MD Hunter has been “on the front lines” fighting against SB43

On January 19, Arkansas drag queen MD Hunter gave a testimony before the Arkansas Senate about SB43.

Hunter, whose stage name is Athena Sinclair, explained that “nudity is not a thing that you would probably see at a drag show.”

Hunter also spoke about the variety of performances and work that drag queens do across the community, including drag queen story time in schools and LGBTQ+ pride events.  

In an interview with Insider, Hunter, who has a long history of political and social activism, said they have been fighting against SB43 since its creation.

“As soon as this bill was proposed I knew I was going to be on the front lines against it. Our community is smaller here in Arkansas so everyone reached out to me asking what we could do to stop this,” Hunter said. 

According to Hunter, the bill’s restrictions would severely impact venues that offer drag performances. 

“If passed it requires different regulations for our safe places that have drag, including a distance from a park or public place. All of our venues are currently in violation of this so they would either have to move or quit having drag.”

The bill would also add “addition stress and fear” for nonbinary and trans people.

“I can take Athena off, they can’t, so I’m deeply concerned for our trans community,” Hunter said.

Despite the confusing nature of the bill, drag advocates are worried about how it could be applied. Organizations, like the ACLU of Arkansas and the Human Right Campaign, have released statements condemning SB43. 

Human Rights Campaign State Director Eric Reece said: “This is just another example of radical politicians in Arkansas spreading propaganda and creating more stigma, discrimination, and ultimately violence against transgender and non-binary people just to rile up extreme members of their base, the only voting bloc they are moving on these issues.” 

Burger and steak prices could soar this year after the US cow population fell 3%.

Mina Abodahab/500px/Getty Images

• The US cow population fell 3% last year while beef cows decreased to their lowest level since 1962, according to the Department of Agriculture.
• That fall in supply is likely to drive up the price of food like burgers and steaks.
• “Stronger prices will likely be the theme of the market over the next two to potentially three years,” an analyst said.

Americans should brace for prices of beef-based products ranging from hamburgers to high-quality steaks to soar after US cow numbers plummeted.

The total cow population in the country fell 3% to 89.3 million in 2022, according to a Department of Agriculture cattle inventory report published Tuesday.

The number of milk cows rose slightly but beef cows plunged 4% to just under 29 million – the lowest total since records started in 1962.

Agricultural strategists attributed the drop to a years-long drought in the US’s plains region, which has slashed total feed supplies and encouraged farmers to cut the size of their herds.

Wheat and corn futures also soared last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine cut off global supplies from the so-called “breadbasket of Europe” – although they’ve since climbed back to pre-war levels.

The fall in US cow numbers will likely be felt in diners and kitchens, with lower beef supplies encouraging farmers to raise prices and those then being passed on to Americans buying burgers or steaks.

“What Tuesday’s report solidifies is that not only do we have ‘fewer’ beef cows in the industry than compared to years past, but also that we have the fewest beef cows ever recorded,” DTN livestock analyst ShayLe Stewart said. “That’s a stark reality to stomach and a factor that should send the cattle market soaring.”

“Tight supplies amid strong demand beckon for prices to become stronger, and stronger prices will likely be the theme of the market over the next two to potentially three years until the market sees substantial build back,” she added.

Read more: The market chaos sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may finally be over, according to these 5 charts

Hello 10 Things on Wall Street readers! I’m Michelle Abrego filling in for Dan DeFrancesco today. 

From why activist crusader Nelson Peltz is suing a Florida party planner to layoffs at fintech giant PayPal, there’s plenty to get into today.

Let’s get to it.

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Fidelity; General Atlantic; Jefferies Group; Goldman Sachs; Rachel Mendelson/Insider

 

1. Not everything in January was about layoffs.

While it looks as if layoffs will continue to dominate the headlines in February and potentially well into 2023, I want to turn to a more upbeat topic. 

As you might know, for the last few years Insider has been highlighting some of the most talented young people on Wall Street. We started tracking up-and-comers back in 2017. Each year gets harder than the last, to pick 25 people that represent the future face of the highly competitive financial-services industry.  Many have continued to excel at the same companies they kicked off their careers in, while others have made significant career moves, or launched their own ventures. 

In mid-January, we had a party hosted at PayPal’s offices to celebrate five years of our list. Rising stars alumni from all different years came to catch up, network, and probably compare how good or bad their 2022s were. 

Take a look at all the photos from Insider’s celebration of Wall Street’s rising stars here. 

And if you have any suggestions for people to highlight for our 2023 cohort, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at mabrego@insider.com.

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In other news:

Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz at the 2022 Met Gala.

Taylor Hill/Getty Images

2. Get ready for the “greatest tinderbox-timebomb in financial history,” the hedge fund advised by the author of “The Black Swan” has warned. Excessive borrowing has created a credit bubble that is due to spark a “catastrophic market failure,” said Universa Investment’s chief investment officer Mark Spitznagel.

3. PayPal cuts 2,000  employees. The layoffs will affect about 7% of employees and will take place in the coming weeks, CEO Dan Schulman told employees in a memo. Read more here. 

4. How much is Silicon Valley hurting? Pretty badly if you’re looking at Fidelity’s new valuations of some former tech darlings. See the mutual fund manager’s latest markdowns of Stripe, Reddit, and Instacart.

5. Apollo, the trendsetter. A decade after the private-equity giant helped launch Athene Holdings, more private money managers are moving into insurance as they hunt for higher yields, the Wall Street Journal reports.

6. Billionaire Nelson Peltz claims he was “hoodwinked.” It’s not a bloated corporate conglomerate that the activist investor is waging a fight with this time, but party planners who worked on his daughter Nicola’s glitzy wedding to Brooklyn Beckham.

7. Highly paid men are working less. A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that men with degrees who earn $100,000 per year or more are leading the charge to clock in fewer hours at work. Here’s why they’re not being quiet about it.

8. ChatGPT’s got some competition. Well, in the investing department at least. As Insider found out, the chatbot has not mastered markets yet. However, the $102 million AI Powered Equity ETF (AIEQ), an ETF that leans on IBM’s Watson supercomputer to balance its portfolio is beating the market by nearly 100%.

9. Twitter avoids bankruptcy, for now. The social media company paid off the first installment of the $12.5 billion debt this month to the seven banks that financed the deal. Insider previously took a look at why these banks even agreed to loan money to Elon Musk to take Twitter private.

10. From Goldman Sachs to the NFL. Adam Berry, head of US loan trading is leaving Wall Street to join the Philadelphia Eagles, according to Bloomberg. He’s not joining until May, but let’s hope they’ve offered him some Superbowl tickets. 

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Edited by Jeffrey Cane (tweet @jeffrey_cane) in New York and Hallam Bullock (tweet @hallam_bullock) in London. 

 

National Football League quarterback Tom Brady, who won seven Super Bowls and is considered one of the game’s all-time greats, said on Wednesday that he was retiring, a year after he made the same announcement only to change his mind weeks later.

“I am retiring for good,” Brady said in a 53-second video message that he posted on Twitter. “Thank you guys for allowing me to live my absolute dream.”

The 45-year-old Brady spent 20 seasons with the New England Patriots before relocating to Florida and leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl championship in 2021.

He retired for a short time after last season but reversed course and led Tampa Bay to the playoffs again in the current season before the team was eliminated.

The Northern California native is widely regarded as the best quarterback in league history and exits the game with five Super Bowl MVP awards and three league MVP awards.

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