The days of Hakuna Matata may be long past.

Two weeks after taking “Jimmy Kimmel Live” off the air and a week after bringing it back, the House of Mouse remains in a Whole New World of trouble — with threats coming from all sides. And restoring peace to the Magic Kingdom may be the biggest challenge in lame-duck CEO Bob Iger’s entire Disney career.

Plus is More

In a divided America, it’s almost impossible to make everyone happy — and seemingly easy to make everyone mad. While Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has somewhat walked back his anti-Kimmel rhetoric since the comedian’s reinstatement, POTUS said in a Truth Social post that the government still might “test ABC on this.” Meanwhile, major ABC affiliate owners NextStar and Sinclair said Friday that they would bring Kimmel back to their airwaves after multiple days of refusing to carry the show.

Nexstar said it’s committed “to protecting the First Amendment while producing and airing local and national news that is fact-based and unbiased” and that government officials hadn’t influenced its decisions.

At the network level, Disney’s (ultimately brief) Kimmel cancellation prompted a wave of streaming-subscription cancellations from fans. It’s somewhat ill-timed for Disney, both because it has committed to another quarter of reporting streaming subscriptions and because the protest coincided with increases in its monthly subscription prices last week. Worse, the fiasco has triggered a legal threat from major Disney shareholders, who claim Iger and his C-suite may have breached their fiduciary duties by caving to political pressure when they sidelined Kimmel.

All in all, the entire crisis has some analysts wondering if it’s time for Disney to get out of the linear TV game entirely:

• In an appearance on CNBC’s Fast Money last week, analyst Rich Greenfeld of LightShed Partners said Disney should spin off both ABC and ESPN, with the move likely to happen after Iger’s planned retirement at the end of 2026.
• In a note to clients last week, analysts at brokerage firm Needham suggested that Disney should shut down (rather than spin off or sell) ABC and move all its content to streaming. That would remove Disney content from public airwaves and away from FCC regulatory oversight (Carr has, however, floated expanding the agency’s regulatory power to digital channels).

Model Behavior: By jettisoning its linear TV business, Disney would be following in the footsteps of Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal, which have both started to move on from the old media world. Meanwhile, in its pursuit of WBD, the new-look Paramount-Skydance may take a page from the Disney playbook. On Friday, Puck reported that Paramount intends to keep WBD’s film and TV studios intact and relatively independent following any acquisition, similar to Disney’s approach after acquiring Pixar, LucasFilm, Marvel Studios, 20th Century Studios and FX. Iger may be on the way out (allegedly), but he still knows a thing or two about running a Hollywood empire.

In 23 B.C., the Roman poet Horace advised “carpe diem,” or “seize the day.” Now, get ready for the 21st-century spin on it: carpe diem trading.

Last week, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority signed off on changes that would scrap a minimum equity rule that keeps many retail traders out of so-called “pattern day trading.” Pending approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, it will open up a new investing avenue for one of the market’s most aggressive cohorts.

Pattern Unrecognition

FINRA defines day trading as buying and selling — or selling and buying — the same security on the same day from a margin account, a type of brokerage account where investors can borrow money to buy securities. The strategy is to profit from short-term, often small, price movements.

If you execute four or more day trades within a five-day business period, then you’re considered a “pattern day trader.” Since 2001, pattern day traders have been required to maintain a minimum balance of $25,000 in their margin account, which presents a barrier for many everyday retail traders. The rule was introduced amid concerns prompted by the dot-com bubble that small retail investors were loading up on too much risk, especially via trendy internet stocks. Fast forward to FINRA’s approval of replacement standards last week:

• Under the new rule, pattern day traders would no longer have to maintain a fixed-dollar threshold. Instead, their holding requirements will be based on the amount of risk they take during the day.
• The new rule will apply existing maintenance margin rules to intraday trading exposure. FINRA’s maintenance margin rules require holding a minimum of 25% of a security’s value, meaning the minimum balance that pattern day traders have to carry will fluctuate with the positions they take on.

Paying Mind: Jefferies reported earlier this year that retail trading now accounts for 20.5% of the market’s daily trading volume, more than double the 10% in 2010. Research published last month by New York University’s Stern School of Business and the National Bureau of Economic Research found the median investor spends a mere six minutes researching each trade. One hopes that any individuals becoming pattern day traders will develop longer attention spans.

Nuclear energy firm Oklo may be teetering on something of a meltdown — no, not that kind. Shares of the Sam Altman-backed company shed more than 20% of their value through the back half of last week as insiders engaged in a sizable stock selloff. Goldman Sachs analysts are now telling clients to proceed with caution. So what’s happening to one of the year’s hottest stocks?

Cherno-bull or Cherno-bear?

Before last week, Oklo’s stock had soared more than 550% since the start of the year, reflecting industry-wide hype as Big Tech, backed by a friendly administration, sought to revive nuclear energy to power its massive AI data center ambitions. But, as with much of the AI hype, the excitement surrounding Oklo may have been a case of putting the radioactive cart before the horse.

The firm remains pre-revenue and has yet to finalize a power purchase agreement. Any commercial operations are still at least a couple of years away. It’s why more than a few players saw last week as a time to tap the brakes:

• On Wednesday, Goldman initiated coverage of Oklo stock with a neutral rating, saying the company’s bloated valuation and the “heavy capital burden” of actually operating nuclear plants could lead to an 11% share price decline in the next year.
• Meanwhile, according to Verity data seen by CNBC, myriad insiders have used the opportunity created by the peaking stock to cash out some holdings: CFO Craig Bealmear sold $9.4 million of stock in the week ending September 19, followed by company director Michael Klein selling $6.7 million worth of shares and CEO Jacob DeWitte unloading $3 million in the form of a gift last week.

Lighting Up: In the meantime, the massive boom in data centers continues to drive up energy costs. In a report last month, the US Energy Information Administration found that the nationwide average retail residential price for 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity rose 6.5% from May 2024 to May 2025. According to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, some of the country’s biggest spikes can be attributed to rising data center activity.