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Stellar (XLM) is outperforming the crypto markets, posting an 80% move in a short time and a mammoth rise in trading volume. The token also outperformed Bitcoin (BTC), leading by a staggering 33.7% in indexed performance over the past 2 days. Moreover, the XLM price, recording yet another 22.85% jump in the past 24 hours, …
Major League Baseball owners made their long-expected salary cap proposal to the players’ association on Thursday, a system the union has vowed never to accept, setting the sides on course for a confrontation that threatens the 2027 season and perhaps beyond.
Baseball owners hadn’t proposed a firm cap since 1994. Their effort prompted a 7 1/2-month strike that forced the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years.
MLB’s proposal would cap spending in 2027 at $245.3 million, using figures for luxury tax payrolls that include benefits and the pre-arbitration bonus pool, and establish a payroll floor of $171.2 million. The Los Angeles Dodgers, baseball’s biggest spenders, had a $415.2 million payroll on opening day this year — around $170 million over the proposed cap.
Owners said they would discuss a phase-in schedule that would give teams like the Dodgers time to comply with the cap and an escrow system with the union as part of a proposed seven-year deal, that all current contracts would remain guaranteed and there would be no prohibition of guaranteed contracts under the cap system.
MLB said it would centralize local media revenue from the 30 teams equally and give players a 50-50 split as part of a proposal that would eliminate the current revenue-sharing plan among the clubs.
“Our salary cap and floor proposal levels the playing field while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50/50 as we grow the game together,” MLB spokesman Glen Caplin said in a statement. “Further, by sharing media revenue equally as part of our proposal, we can address another top fan concern of local TV blackouts.”
Baseball’s current five-year deal, agreed to in March 2022 after a 99-day lockout, expires Dec. 2. While a lockout next winter is expected, talks are not likely to intensify until late February or early March 2027, when the possibilities of losing regular-season games and revenue near. If regular-season games are lost, negotiations may become a standoff of which side can tolerate the most economic loss.
Based on 2026 opening day figures, eight teams would have to cut payroll to get under the cap. The teams over are the two-time reigning World Series champion Dodgers, New York Mets ($379.2 million), New York Yankees ($339.6 million), Toronto ($319.5 million), Philadelphia ($315.2 million), Boston ($263.7 million), San Diego ($260.1 million) and Atlanta ($247.9 million).
Twelve teams would be required to increase payroll by a total of $617 million based on 2026 numbers: Miami ($81.8 million), Cleveland ($95.7 million), Tampa Bay ($108.2 million), the Chicago White Sox ($108.6 million), St. Louis ($114.4 million), Washington ($119.1 million), Pittsburgh ($122.6 million), Minnesota ($125.6 million), Milwaukee ($130.9 million), the Athletics ($139.2 million), Colorado ($142.2 million) and Cincinnati ($148.8 million).
Owners and the union agreed to a luxury tax in 2003 designed to slow spending, but teams feel it has had little or no impact on the Dodgers and Mets in recent years. The last small-market MLB club to win a World Series was Kansas City in 2015, although Cleveland, Tampa Bay and Milwaukee all lead their divisions as of Thursday, while the Mets and Red Sox are in last place.
MLB said its revenue has grown by 247% since 2003 and player payroll has increased by 149% in that span.
Management gave the union its latest plan during a bargaining session at the commissioner’s office, one day after the union made its economic proposal. Owners say a cap is needed to improve competitive balance and restrain wealthy teams from assembling starrier rosters than their smaller-market brethren.
Players want expanded free agency and salary arbitration rights along with almost doubling the major league minimum, increasing the money high-revenue teams share with the less-wealthy clubs and establishing penalties for teams that drop below payroll floors.
Other U.S. major sports leagues operate under a cap. The NBA had a cap in its initial season in 1946-47, then dropped that and began its modern version in 1984-85. NFL players and owners adopted a cap for the 1994 season, and the NHL did so in 2005-06 after a lockout wiped out the entire 2004-05 season.
The Dodgers shattered MLB’s spending record with a combined $515 million in payroll and luxury tax last year en route to their second straight World Series title. Los Angeles’ total was seven times the $68.7 million payroll of the Marlins, the lowest-spending team, and more than the payrolls of the bottom six clubs combined.
Players say a cap would hurt them and enrich owners, and they say they will never agree to one. Without a cap, MLB stars have landed lucrative, guaranteed contracts that outpace what the biggest stars in other U.S. sports leagues make. Juan Soto’s $765 million, 15-year contract with the Mets is believed to be the biggest ever in team sports and is far greater than the largest deals in the NFL (Patrick Mahomes at $450 million over 10 years) and NBA (Jayson Tatum at $314 million over five years).
MLB’s last salary cap proposal in 1994 offered players a 50-50 split of revenue in a system that would have forced teams to maintain payrolls of 84%-110% of the average. Salary arbitration would have been eliminated and the threshold for free agency would have been lowered from six years’ major league service to four — with the provision that a player’s former club could match any offer until he had six years.
MLB’s offer came on June 14 that year, and players struck on Aug. 12. MLB withdrew the cap proposal the following Feb. 6 after pressure by the National Labor Relations Board. The strike ended on March 31 after U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor — now a Supreme Court justice — issued an injunction restoring the work rules of the expired labor contract. Two days later, owners accepted the union’s offer to return to work without an agreement. A deal wasn’t reached until 1997.
Stanley Druckenmiller just made a few portfolio moves that Wall Street is watching rather closely.
The billionaire founder of Duquesne Family Office – widely regarded as the most influential active money manager since Warren Buffett’s retirement – has completely exited his position in Alphabet and piled into five AI hardware stocks instead.
His latest 13F filing, covering holdings as of March 31st, reveals a bet on the physical infrastructure that powers artificial intelligence (AI), not the software giants who ride it.
Names Druckenmiller has invested in include SanDisk, Micron, Seagate, Broadcom, and Arm.
Duquesne has offloaded its entire stake in Alphabet, selling all 385,000 Class A shares worth nearly $153 million – a position the billionaire had just built up by 277% in the prior quarter.
The exit looks like disciplined profit-taking, given Google, in the two-plus quarters Druckenmiller held the stock, appreciated by more than 50%.
Following this surge, Google shares are trading at roughly 28x forward earnings, versus 17x only just a year ago.
Druckenmiller has also been openly skeptical about AI valuations – saying he believes “AI might be a little overhyped now” and that “AI could rhyme with the internet.”
And when the valuation no longer fits the thesis, the billionaire moves on – fast.
Duquesne opened a new position in SanDisk, buying 38,155 shares worth about $24.2 million – and the timing was exceptional.
SNDK’s Q3 report was the giveaway; revenue hit $6 billion versus $4.7 billion estimates, up 251% year-over-year, with data center sales of $1.5 billion, up 645% year-over-year.
CEO David Goeckeler described the results as “a fundamental inflection point,” citing a structural shift toward AI inference workloads that demand high-speed NAND flash at scale.
With hyperscalers locking in multi-year supply agreements, SanDisk is no longer just a consumer storage brand – it has become a critical node in the AI infrastructure stack.
Druckenmiller’s bet on Micron stock may prove to be his sharpest call of the quarter.
Micron delivered Q2 revenue of $23.9 billion – a 196% increase year-over-year – cementing its position as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom.
The numbers didn’t just beat estimates – they demolished them. Earnings per share (EPS) came in at $12.07, far above the $9.33 consensus, while revenue exceeded forecasts by nearly $3.7 billion.
And the outlook is even more striking: for the current quarter, MU guided for about $33.5 billion in revenue, implying year-over-year growth of over 200%.
As CEO Sanjay Mehrotra put it, Micron is an essential AI enabler and the only US-based memory manufacturer – a strategic asset in a supply-constrained world.
Old-fashioned spinning hard drives sound like a strange AI play, but Druckenmiller saw something others missed; Duquesne bought 50,700 Seagate shares valued at about $19.9 million.
The thesis is playing out emphatically. Seagate’s Q3 delivered revenue of $3.1 billion – up 44% year-over-year, with adjusted earnings per share of $4.10 – far ahead of analyst expectations.
Better yet, demand visibility is “extraordinary”: nearline capacity is nearly fully allocated through calendar 2027, with build-to-order contracts being finalized through the end of fiscal 2027.
Moreover, the top three global cloud providers’ remaining purchase obligations nearly doubled to about $1.1 trillion; Seagate is essentially sold out well into next year.
Druckenmiller initiated a significant new stake in Broadcom, purchasing roughly 196,000 shares worth $60.7 million – the largest single new position in the batch.
Broadcom is the dominant designer of custom AI accelerators for hyperscalers like Google and Meta, offering a cost-effective alternative to Nvidia’s off-the-shelf GPUs.
Q1 AI revenue hit $8.4 billion, up 106% year-over-year, above the company’s own forecast – and the acceleration isn’t slowing: AVGO guided for AI semiconductor revenue of $10.7 billion in Q2, with total Q2 revenue expected to reach $22 billion, up 47% year-over-year.
CEO Hock Tan has stated plainly that AI revenue growth is accelerating, with the company eyeing $100 billion in cumulative AI-related sales by 2027.
Rounding out the five picks is Arm Holdings, the British chip-design firm whose instruction set architecture sits inside virtually every modern processor.
Duquesne opened a new position of 106,700 ARM shares worth about $16.1 million.
ARM is benefiting structurally from AI’s spread across every compute environment.
For the full fiscal year, Arm posted record revenue of $4.9 billion, with royalty revenue up 21% and licensing revenue up 25%, its third consecutive year of more than 20% revenue growth since going public.
Most tellingly, data center royalties more than doubled year-over-year as cloud companies increasingly turn to Arm-based custom chips.
With AI moving from training to inference at the edge and in data centers alike, Arm’s architecture is everywhere – and Druckenmiller is betting it stays that way.
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