Your bag didn’t get any heavier, but the fees you’ll have to pay to check it just did.
 

Hey Snackers,

In a real will-they-or-won’t-they drama, early Tuesday it looked like Apple’s foldable iPhone was doomed to be delayed by engineering troubles, but later in the day reports emerged that the company was not folding on the timeline for delivery. Either way, you have until at least September to save up for the first foldable smartphone from Apple, which will reportedly cost more than $2,000.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 eked out gains in the final minutes of trading on Tuesday, continuing their five-day winning streaks, while the Russell 2000 rose as well. Stocks pared steeper losses as a few reports gave investors a glimmer of hope that negotiations around the war with Iran could progress. 

 
CAN’T CARRY ON LIKE THIS

Three US airlines have already hiked baggage fees. More are likely on the way.

Your bag didn’t get any heavier, but the fees you’ll have to pay to check it just did.

With Delta’s move to hike its bag fees by $10 on domestic flights beginning Wednesday, three of America’s six largest airlines have now raised the prices customers must pay to check their luggage in recent days. (JetBlue and United Airlines made the move last week.)

  • If history is any indicator, more airlines are likely to follow. Delta last hiked bag fees in March 2024, after United, JetBlue, American Airlines, and Alaska Air all chose to do so.
  • Bag fees are benefiting the aviation industry more every year. Through the first three quarters of 2025, checked luggage charges generated $5.47 billion in revenue for the country’s largest airlines — up about 12% from the industry’s full-year total in 2018.
  • Carriers have already hiked airfares in recent weeks, and United CEO Scott Kirby last month said they’d need to rise another 20% for the airline to “break even.” Deutsche Bank puts the industrywide figure at 17%, should fuel prices remain where they are. 

The soaring price of jet fuel is largely to blame for the recent fee hikes. According to a Tuesday research note from Deutsche Bank, if jet fuel costs remain at their present level — they reached $4.69 a gallon on Monday, per the Argus US Jet Fuel Index, more than doubling from early February amid the war in Iran — the industry could be looking at a fuel cost headwind of roughly $40 billion this year.

THE TAKEAWAY

“Airlines have never seen a significant jet fuel price increase that they haven’t in some way, shape, or form passed along to consumers. And this will not be the exception,” said Bill McGee, the senior fellow for aviation at the American Economic Liberties Project. “But at the same time, they’re also scared as hell, because between the war and the TSA issues, the hassle factor of flying right now is extremely high.”

Messing with fares too much could risk a significant drop in demand. Still, shareholders will expect airlines to try everything they can to curb potential losses. As McGee put it, “These are the times that try airline executives’ souls.”

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BEST DEFENSE IS…

Anthropic is releasing its new model to select companies to get a head start on cyber defense

Anthropic said that it’s releasing “Mythos Preview,” a version of its new AI model, to a select group of mostly tech companies (and JPMorgan) so they can get to work on protecting against cyberattacks. Shares of CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks, two cybersecurity firms on this list, caught a bid on the news.

  • Anthropic dubbed this initiative “Project Glasswing,” with the goal to “secure the world’s most critical software.”
  • Those cybersecurity stocks had faced heavy selling pressure in late March, when a leaked Anthropic document reviewed by Fortune warned that its new model would be so powerful that malicious actors could launch potentially indefensible cyberattacks.
  • That same report also said that Anthropic would be releasing Mythos early to cybersecurity firms to help them bolster their defenses... which is exactly what Project Glasswing is doing.

As an aside, sincere congratulations to JPMorgan and CEO Jamie Dimon for effectively being recognized as a tech company, something every bank has wanted to be known as for at least a decade. 

THE TAKEAWAY

It’s been a busy 24 hours for Anthropic, with the Claude developer announcing an expansion of its partnership with Google and Broadcom for AI compute and saying that its run-rate revenue has surpassed $30 billion, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025.

Some of that jump could be juiced by Meta’s engineers, whose AI usage may be serving as another example of Goodhart’s Law (per this report from The Information). That being said, there’s clearly some breadth, and not just depth: Anthropic said the number of business customers spending over $1 million on an annualized basis has doubled since February to above 1,000.

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THE BEST THING WE READ TODAY

Bloomberg analyst outlines all the reasons he’s sticking with his call that bitcoin will crater to $10,000

“I made the same call for bitcoin to lose a zero from around $10,000 in 2018. Was 70% right, 30% wrong — the low was about $3,000,” Mike McGlone told Sherwood News. Other experts we spoke to called his prediction “mostly only an attention-grabbing extreme” and “almost unimaginable.”

His one caveat

 

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