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Between traditional television, video-on-demand releases, and a growing number of streaming services, it can be hard to keep up with what one should watch week to week. Fortune is here to help you keep track of new releases as well as the occasional older title worth checking out. Take a look at this weekend’s notable arrivals, a couple you may have missed earlier in the week, and what else is coming soon:

Netflix

Skip Bolen—Netflix

Project Power: The new take on the superhero genre—which involves people taking pills to develop powers—stars Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Dominique Fishback. It arrives on Netflix Aug. 14. Read Fortune’s interview with Fishback, as well as filmmakers Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost, here.

Glow Up: Ding dong! The second season of this U.K. makeup competition will be available to watch stateside on Aug. 14.

All four seasons of The Legend of Korra also arrive on the streamer Aug. 14, along with Teenage Bounty Hunters, the fourth season of 3%, and animated superhero adventure Fearless.

On TV

Elizabeth Morris—HBO

Horror series Lovecraft Country, produced by Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams and starring Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett, will premiere on HBO Aug. 16 at 9 p.m. ET (and will be available to stream on the HBO and HBO Max apps).

The fifth season of The Circus: Inside the Craziest Political Campaign on Earth returns to Showtime on Aug. 16 at 8 p.m. ET.

Discovery channel’s Shark Week comes to its conclusion on Aug. 16.

Apple TV+

Apple TV+

Ted Lasso: Jason Sudeikis plays the title character in this new comedy series, which arrives on Apple TV+ Aug. 14. Sudeikis portrays a college football coach from Kansas who has to coach a professional soccer team in England.

Boys State: The documentary, which took the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, comes to Apple TV+ on Aug. 14 and will give viewers a glimpse into what happens when 1,000 Texas high school senior boys gather to build their own government.

More must-read entertainment coverage from Fortune:

• Photo essay: The drive-in sees a resurgence throughout the world
• Movie delays are stacking up. Where does Hollywood go from here?
• Smaller music venues face “the great unknown” before live shows can resume at full capacity
• Disney Q3 earnings: Streaming a bright spot as parks and cruises plummet
• Amy Schumer’s documentary Expecting Amy proves pregnancy can coexist with women’s careers and ambition

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.

Good morning. U.S. futures are holding steady despite growing trade tensions between the U.S. and China. There’s more choppy trade in the dollar as gold soars for another day.

Let’s take a look at what’s moving markets.

Markets update

Asia

• The major Asia indexes are mixed in afternoon trade with the Shanghai Composite leading the way higher, up 0.7%.
• China has drawn up a list of Americans to sanction in retaliation for similar moves imposed on Friday by the Trump White House. The list includes senators Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton and Pat Toomey; Congressman Chris Smith and Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth.
• Hong Kong Media tycoon and pro-democracy advocate Jimmy Lai was arrested under Beijing’s contentious new national security law. Shares in his media network Next Digital fell as much as 16.7% to the lowest level on record Monday morning following reports of the arrests.
• Saudi Aramco had a rough first half, with net profits crashing by 50%. The world’s biggest oil producer did manage to pay its second-quarter dividend of $18.75 billion, and plans to pay it this quarter too.

Europe

• The European bourses were gaining out of the gates this morning, before falling. Germany’s Dax was down 0.2% two hours into the trading session.
• A wave of mass unemployment is expected to hit the U.K. this quarter as one-third of employers say they plan to cut payrolls, according to a new survey by human resources specialists CIPD and Adecco Group.
• It’s not just Britain. A rising number of Europeans are heading for a household debt crisis, even in wealthy EU countries such as Germany where the economy is rebounding strongly.

U.S.

• The major indexes look to start the week off in positive territory as U.S. futures are trading higher, though they’re off their early highs. The Dow and S&P 500 finished last week week in the green after a stronger than expected jobs report.
• With Congress failing to agree on a fiscal stimulus package, President Trump over the weekend signed a quartet of executive orders, including an extension of the unemployment benefit supplement to a reduced 400 bucks. “The details, however, are not as generous as he made them sound,” The Washington Post reports.
• Warren Buffett’s cash-rich Berkshire Hathaway was busy in Q2, buying a record amount of its own shares. Buffett famously scans the marketplace looking for bargains in a downturn, but settled on his own shares instead.

Elsewhere

• Gold has been climbing all morning.
• The dollar is trading sideways at the moment.
• Crude is climbing with Brent up 1%.

***

Dollar daze

For dollar bulls, July was rough, the worst monthly performance in a decade. The greenback is off 10% since March, a stunning collapse. It’s unlikely to rebound any time soon, and that means you should think about how that will impact your portfolio.

Ben Carlson, the director of institutional asset management at Ritholtz Wealth Management, writes in Fortune that currency fluctuations like this are not uncommon. Currency strength is a cyclical phenomenon. And, he notes, we appear to be entering a new weak-dollar cycle after a decade of strength.

What does that portend for the markets? Carlson dug into the history books and pulled up data that shows a weak dollar most impacts these three assets: gold, foreign stocks and emerging markets.

“In years of dollar weakness,” he writes, “foreign stocks have risen 85% of the time, gold is up 80% of the time, and emerging markets have advanced 65% of the time.

“On the other hand, in years of dollar strength, foreign stocks are up just 62% of the time, gold is only up 42% of the time, and emerging markets rose just 50% of the time.”

Here’s the data, spanning back to the Nixon years.

A weak dollar is good news, in general, for the S&P 500—particularly for multinationals that got a currency boost for their products and services sold abroad.

Gold does even better in these years. But the best performers of the bunch are foreign stocks and emerging markets, also big beneficiaries of the favorable FX swing. It’s simple math, actually. “If the dollar falls, that means your foreign stocks are worth more once they’re converted to our currency,” Carlson writes.

There’s an added factor—politics—at play with overseas stocks at the moment. A wave of money managers are betting on a Biden victory in November, anticipating that a change of the guard in the White House would lead to smoother trade relations and more climate-friendly policy, thus boosting, for example, European clean-energy stocks and cyclicals.

A lot can happen between now and November, but it’s unlikely the dollar will mount a comeback any time soon.

***

Postscript

A few years ago, I found myself on a business trip in the Bay area. There was nothing particularly notable about that trip except that, on my final day there, my wife called me with surprisingly big news. “The hospital just rang,” she told me. “We might be getting a kidney. We’ll know tomorrow morning.” 

This was December, 2017, and my daughter had been on the waiting list for a new kidney for just a few weeks. The news floored me. I went from dumbfounded to excited to an emotional wreck in the span of about three seconds. 

How was I going to get from San Francisco to Rome in time for the transplant?, I instantly fretted. 

I got an Uber to the airport and Googled every flight connection possible that would get me to Rome in under 15 hours, hoping that might buy me enough time to be there when my daughter came out of surgery. Just as I was determining my best route—fly direct to Zurich, then to Rome—I got a call. It was the home number. 

It was my M., my daughter, (the twins were 7-years-old at the time). She had overheard all the commotion about her twin sister, T., and she had one very important question for me. 

The exchange went something like this:

M.: Dad, is T. going in for surgery? To get a kidney?

Me: We’re not sure yet. But, yes, we might have a match. And that would be good news—

M.: Dad, do you remember what you promised us? 

Me: Huh?

M.: That after the transplant we can have a dog. 

M.: You promised!

I don’t remember how exactly I wiggled out of that phone call. But I remember negotiating for time in as firm a voice as possible, which wasn’t very firm at all.

A few minutes later I got to the airport, and, as luck would have it, I was able to change flights to get a seat bound for Zurich. The next 12-ish hours were among the longest of my life. The in-flight wifi was buggy the entire trip, and the Swiss Air crew was unable to help me get a line down to Planet Earth, to my wife and daughter at the hospital. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I had a momentary patch of reception and got the news, via WhatsApp, that the surgeons and nephrologists were in disagreement over the fitness of the organ. That only got me more anxious. 

Hours later, I landed in Zurich, dashed across the airport and was still unable to get anything resembling an update. Too late. My gate was closing. I crammed into the last seat of the plane for a 90-minute flight that somehow felt longer than the San Fran-Zurich leg. 

Once my plane touched down in Rome, I frantically checked my phone. I could see all kinds of WhatsApps messages. I exhaled, and was about to tap the app when the phone rang. It was the house number. 

Me: Hey, I just landed.

A voice: Dad.

Me: M.?

M.: Does this mean we can’t get a dog!?

And that’s how I learned the docs had rejected the kidney, and that there would be no surgery, no transplant that day.

T. eventually got her kidney. From her super-hero mom. And, just a few days ago, I made good on our promise: the girls now have a new puppy. This is Scilla. 

She has a story too. That’s for the next Postscript.

***

Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow. 

Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com

As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused some big tech companies to embrace remote work permanently. But Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri is eager to get his employees back to the physical office.

“I’m not a believer that having a significant population work from home forever is a great idea. You can’t really develop a great culture,” Bhusri, chief executive and cofounder of the enterprise software company, says on the latest episode of Fortune‘s podcast “Leadership Next.” 

“You can execute well, during this time, but you really can’t collaborate and innovate in the same way,” he tells Fortune‘s Alan Murray. “It’s really important that we come up with a model that works for our culture, but also gives some flexibility if people want to work a couple of days a week from home.”

Workday, which makes cloud-based software used by other companies’ human resources and accounting departments, is hoping it can start bringing employees back to its offices in January. That’s a more optimistic outlook than at Google, which last week told employees that they would be working remotely until at least July 2021. But Bhusri acknowledges “if there’s not a viable vaccine by January, we might be very well be in the same position as Google.”

In the remainder of the interview, Murray asks Bhusri about the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic on Workday’s business and on its stakeholder capitalism. “Companies need to have a soul and need to step up in tough times,” says Bhusri, a member of the Business Roundtable and whose company is ranked fifth on Fortune‘s 2020 list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.

He also discusses why tech companies—including Workday, where less than 3% of employees are Black—have failed for so long to hire and retain more diverse workforces and how to change that status quo.

“I think in the Bay Area, we all think the world is a meritocracy, and I think there’s some truth to it. I don’t think that’s actually how the rest of the world works out,” Bhusri says. “You really do have to lean in … to really create great career paths for everybody, not just for a few.”

More must-read careers coverage from Fortune:

• At this university, any student can sign up to get professional leadership coaching—for free
• Bethenny Frankel on her latest business ventures and how she became a self-made mogul
• The pandemic makes the case for more transparent layoffs
• 4 ways to close America’s huge racial “opportunity gap”
• The class of 2020 is getting a crash course in job market uncertainty

This is the web version of the Bull Sheet, Fortune’s no-BS daily newsletter on the markets. Sign up to receive it in your inbox here.

Good morning. It’s a busy day for investors with a full lineup of corporate results, plus a Fed rate decision and Big Tech testifying on Capitol Hill. Ahead of the big fireworks, Europe and Asia are mostly in the green this morning; U.S. futures are bouncing off their lows, edging into positive territory.

Let’s check in on the action.

Markets update

Asia

• The major Asia indexes are mixed in afternoon trade. The Shanghai Composite leads the way again, up 2%.
• Some promising news for Apple ahead of tomorrow’s earnings call: Q2 iPhone sales in China jumped 225%, far ahead of rivals, new research shows.
• The HSBC-Huawei affair has gone from worrisome to downright weird. Fortune‘s Grady McGregor reports that the bank’s statement on the matter, posted to WeChat, was deleted by Internet censors, “replacing it with a notice that it had violated China’s Internet regulations.”

Europe

• An hour into the trading session, the European bourses were off their lows with the benchmark Europe Stoxx 600 up nearly 0.3%.
• Deutsche Bank shares were up 2.9% at the open following the bank’s disclosure this morning of better than expected quarterly results and a slightly more optimistic full-year guidance.
• Is Europe’s auto sector ripe for a comeback? Daimler and PSA Group have reported better than expected figures in recent days, leading PSA’s CEO Carlos Tavares to crow, “our order book is stellar.” Not all analysts are convinced the sector is on the road to recovery.

U.S.

• U.S. futures are trading mostly sideways ahead of a big day for Big Tech on Capitol Hill. The CEOs of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook—combined, they account for nearly one-fifth of the S&P, by value— will likely face a heated line of questions from the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. 
• The other big news out of Washington today will come from the Fed, which is scheduled to deliver a rate decision. Yesterday, it extended to year-end seven of its nine emergency lending programs.
• In a note to Bull Sheet, C.J. MacDonald, client portfolio manager of GuideStone Capital Management, points out the Fed “has only utilized a small part of its available monetary arsenal. In March, the Fed initiated $2.9 trillion in monetary aid measures, but to date has only used $138 billion of it. And ironically, the market knows that this huge cache of ammo is standing by, which may mitigate the need to use it at all if the economy declines again later this year.” 

Elsewhere

• Gold futures are climbing again, settling above $1,950 an ounce. One analyst made the bullish call of $3,500 within two years.
• Nobody’s bullish on the dollar. It’s down again.
• Crude too is in the green.

***

In the hot seat

When the titans of tech testify today on Capitol Hill, a good chunk of your portfolio, no doubt, will be in for a grilling.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, which owns Google, have been called upon to defend and discuss the dominance they have across so many business sectors. Their market power has become more pronounced during the pandemic as huge parts of the economy have no choice but to carry out business virtually.

How big have the Big Four become? I thought I’d put it into a simple pie chart.

Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook have a combined market cap of $4.8 trillion, a significant (and growing) piece of the S&P. (Add Microsoft, which is not testifying today, and that pie wedge swells to $6.3 trillion, or nearly one-quarter of the benchmark index.)

The massive divide between the haves and have-nots of the S&P is at historic levels, leading a number of market observers to crack that the S&P 500 should really be renamed the S&P Five.

Not surprisingly, the personal wealth of Bezos and Zuckerberg has grown by a cool $72 billion since the start of the year, according to Bloomberg. As if we need a reminder: Big Tech is having a very good pandemic.

Back to today’s testimony, Fortune‘s Danielle Abril reports the four tech CEOs will likely face a tough line of inquisition as both Republicans and Democrats have their issues with the companies’ dominance.

“Democrats will argue that Big Tech has become too big and powerful and thus needs to be reined in. Republicans will also speak to the harms of Big Tech but with a slight nuance in favor of creating new regulation specifically for the tech companies rather than changing overarching antitrust laws,” she writes.

It will be incumbent upon the CEOs to push the message that they’re a force for good—that they’re a major employer, that they’re investing heavily in innovation to make America more competitive, and that they add value to the American economy.

Shareholders can certainly vouch for the value-added argument.

***

Have a nice day, everyone. I’ll see you here tomorrow. 

Bernhard Warner
@BernhardWarner
Bernhard.Warner@Fortune.com

As always, you can write to bullsheet@fortune.com or reply to this email with suggestions and feedback.

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.

Subscription boxes are piling up at doorsteps as consumers increasingly shop from home and avoid brick-and-mortar stores since the outbreak of COVID-19 earlier this year.

Over the past four months, many U.S. consumers turned toward the direct-to-consumer subscription box market for the first time, with one in five people buying subscription boxes during this time frame to have products available to them during the pandemic, according to a new study from CouponFollow, an online hub for collecting coupon codes and promotions among major retailers.

CouponFollow surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, and more than half (51%) said they bought subscription boxes to try new products, while another 39% said they simply enjoy receiving products in the mail. Approximately 37% of respondents found subscription boxes “easier than shopping.”

“For many American consumers taken by surprise by the pandemic, the subscription box industry brought a sense of comfort and convenience that was highly sought-after immediately following massive shutdowns across the country,” says Marc Mezzacca, founder and CEO at CouponFollow. “It’s the first time in a long time Americans felt massive supply-chain issues in many sectors, especially around essentials. There was a heightened sense of fear around access to products, and consumers looked to other ways to get the goods they desired.”

Meal kits as well as subscriptions for clothing and skin care led the pack. The most popular subscription services are HelloFresh (21%), BarkBox (20%), Blue Apron (19%), Dollar Shave Club (18%), Stitch Fix (12%), and Ipsy (12%), the last of which is a cosmetics-focused subscription service sending out makeup and skin care samples. Beauty shoppers were found to save the most money on subscriptions, at an average of $20 per month. But consumers spend more money on prepared meals and meal kits than any other service (at $74 per box on average).

“My sense is that most people appreciated being able to trust that whatever they need will be delivered to their doorstep during the pandemic,” Mezzacca says.

Subscription boxes saw an initial surge in popularity in the 2010s, led especially by the likes of beauty service Birchbox and grooming supplier Harry’s. Over the past several years, the market has exploded with direct-to-consumer monthly subscriptions for everything from snacks to books to liquor to cannabis products. Some of these services have become hallmark success stories, like Unilever’s $1 billion purchase of Dollar Shave Club in 2016. But other startups have become a dime a dozen.

Mezzacca warns that subscription models of any kind face the battle of keeping subscribers interested and engaged with a product offering, as well as differentiating from similar services. Approximately one in five people indicated they plan to cancel their subscriptions due to COVID-19-related financial hardships, with 30% and 26% saying technology and clothing services will be the first to get cut, respectively.

“This suggests that people may still be a bit more selective about the ‘little luxuries’ they’ll choose to purchase in the short term,” Mezzacca explains. “There seems to be trendy subscription services that pop up and last in parallel with a certain trend, but often fade in the long term. What we’ve seen with some of the most successful, popular, and longer lasting subscription services is meeting a core need (or want) that is shared by many and ensuring a focused and unique value proposition (for example, Dollar Shave Club).”

Although brick-and-mortar stores have reopened to shoppers in many regions, retailers cannot welcome as many customers at once as they could before the pandemic in order to adhere to social distancing guidance. And some shoppers just might not feel comfortable or safe going out right now at all as new cases of COVID-19 continue to surge. So there might be more life in the subscription base for a while. CouponFollow said one in three respondents admitted they’re paying for boxes they don’t really use or need, but they will continue subscribing to try out new products anyway.

“There’s no question that the subscription box model itself is here to stay, but if a subscription service is not conveying continued value to the subscriber, eventually those customers will cancel their subscriptions,” Mezzacca says.

More must-read lifestyle coverage from Fortune:

• “Lights Out”: A new book investigates how and when things fell apart at General Electric
• Media critic Margaret Sullivan outlines the mounting crisis for local journalism
• Sauvignon Blanc has become the go-to wine for Americans during the pandemic
• From ball gowns to medical gowns: How one designer changed her business model to help local health care providers
• Meet the new dating app for parents and people who want kids

If you plan to fly during the pandemic, you’re better off choosing an airline with a policy of keeping the middle seat empty. Such a policy lowers the risk of contracting COVID from 1 in 4,400 to 1 in 7,300, according to a new academic study.

That estimate comes from Arnold Barnett, a statistics professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. His findings—which suggest a “no middle seats” flight reduces risk by 79%—also note that the risk of dying from catching COVID on a flight are less than 1 in half a million.

Barnett’s conclusion on the risk of middle seats comes as U.S. airlines pursue different approaches. For instance, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest have chosen to keep middle seats empty, while United and Spirit are filling them. American is also doing so as it runs many flights that are over-capacity.

The new research should be taken with a grain of salt, however, as Barnett himself acknowledges. In his paper, he emphasizes that his findings are “rough conjecture” in light of the difficulties in calculating such a risk.

Barnett’s calculations are based on numerous assumptions, including that all passengers are wearing masks—a step he says reduces risks of catching COVID by 82%. He also assumes that someone is more likely to catch COVID from those in the same aisle rather than from those in rows behind or in front of them

The findings also disregard the risk of catching COVID from trips to the restroom, or from boarding or getting off the plane. But the latter situation may pose a significant risk according to the Wall Street Journal, which notes the close proximity of passengers waiting to board or scrambling to store luggage.

The Journal, which cited the Barnett study, suggested that flying is not especially dangerous overall, in part because planes frequently replace the air in the cabin.

For his part, Barnett concludes by noting that middle seat policy will also be informed by economic considerations facing the airlines.

“The calculations here, however rudimentary, do suggest a measurable reduction in Covid-19 risk when middle seats on aircraft are deliberately kept open,” he writes. “The question is whether relinquishing 1/3 of seating capacity is too high a price to pay for the added precaution.”

More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:

• If Ernst & Young auditors had done this one thing, they might have uncovered Wirecard’s $2 billion fraud years sooner
• After overbooking flights in a pandemic, American Airlines is now paying passengers to get off
• Should Facebook investors ride out the ad boycott—or cash out?
• Safelite’s CEO on steering the company through crisis—and getting sales back to pre-pandemic levels
• Former Honeywell CEO David Cote just wrote one of the best guides ever on how to lead a company

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.

For more than two years, Apple stock has been the largest holding in Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway portfolio, roughly doubling in value over that time. The coronavirus pandemic has tipped the scales further: Apple now accounts for nearly 44% of Buffett’s roughly $214.5 billion in stocks, based on the investor’s most recent disclosures—including his announcement that he sold out of airline stocks in April.

Of course, while the heavy concentration in Apple has, as some observers have pointed out, left the Oracle of Omaha’s portfolio lopsided and less than diversified, that’s as much a reflection of how well Apple stock has performed this year—up some 30% year to date—as it is of how poorly Buffett’s other holdings have done.

Indeed, Buffett’s second-largest holding, Bank of America stock, has plunged 34% so far this year; his next largest, Coca-Cola, has fallen 19%; after that, American Express is down 25%.

Even doubling down on Apple wasn’t enough for Buffett to make up for those dismal returns: In a year in which the S&P 500 is down less than 2% so far, the stocks Buffett owns have fallen an average of nearly 12%. The only stock that did better than Apple in Berkshire’s holdings is Amazon, up almost 67%—but Buffett’s stake in the company, worth $1.6 billion, makes it a tiny holding next to Apple, of which the investor owns $93.5 billion in shares.

Holding those cards, Berkshire Hathaway stock itself has underperformed many of the companies in its own portfolio, as well as the broader market. Berkshire shares have fallen 20% year to date.

Though Buffett is known for his investing prowess, it’s likely many average investors’ returns have easily outperformed his—even if they don’t have nearly half of their money invested in Apple.

Apple has become such a juggernaut, with a $1.66 trillion market cap that makes it the most valuable company in the world, that it dominates every major U.S. stock index and many broad-based mutual funds. Apple accounts for nearly 6% of the value of the S&P 500—a weighting that has helped buoy investors’ returns amid spiking market volatility.

It’s not just Apple, either: The other big four tech companies at the top of the S&P 500—Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook—have gained significantly in 2020, helping to power the stock index’s comeback from a bear market in March.

Meanwhile, Buffett’s light helping of tech stocks besides Apple has hurt his relative performance compared to the broader market, as tech companies have continued surging this year while other industries faltered. Ultimately, investors would have been better off putting their money in an S&P 500 exchange-traded fund (ETF)—or just Apple stock itself—than they would have been by investing in Berkshire Hathaway.

And here’s an odd twist: Buffett’s own portfolio has been dragging down the broader market. After the five big tech stocks, Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, is the sixth-biggest constituent in the S&P 500, right after Facebook. Together, those six companies make up a quarter—or 25%—of the total index. Without Berkshire, the S&P 500 might be closer to positive territory by now.

More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:

• If Ernst & Young auditors had done this one thing, they might have uncovered Wirecard’s $2 billion fraud years sooner
• After overbooking flights in a pandemic, American Airlines is now paying passengers to get off
• Should Facebook investors ride out the ad boycott—or cash out?
• Safelite’s CEO on steering the company through crisis—and getting sales back to pre-pandemic levels
• Former Honeywell CEO David Cote just wrote one of the best guides ever on how to lead a company

SoftBank Group Corp. shares just reached a new high this year, propelled by a series of buybacks that have seen the stock recoup the losses suffered during the coronavirus market rout.

The stock rose 2.6% on Friday to 5,778 yen ($54), the highest since July 2019. That’s more than double the level of a March low.

The recovery is something of a vindication for CEO Masayoshi Son, who unveiled plans to sell 4.5 trillion yen of assets to reduce debt and bankroll record share buybacks. Son has frequently complained that SoftBank’s shares, even at their peak, trade at less than the value of its portfolio of investments.

SoftBank has also had a series of wins over the same period, finally solving the puzzle of Sprint Corp. and T-Mobile Inc. with their merger completed in April, and seeing a welcome return to successful investment bets as online home-insurance provider Lemonade Inc. surged as much as 86% in its U.S. IPO. Thursday.

“The steps being taken to improve its balance sheet, such as repurchase of its debt, are being recognized,” said Tomoaki Kawasaki, a senior analyst at Iwaicosmo Securities Co.

SoftBank shares have had a volatile run over the past year as portfolio companies such as WeWork ran into trouble and the coronavirus hammered many of its businesses. That triggered a record 1.36 trillion yen operating loss for the last fiscal year. Optimists believe the worst is over for the company.

“After the trillion-yen level writedowns last quarter, it’s not possible that it’ll be worse than that,” said Kawasaki.

Citigroup Global Markets analyst Mitsunobu Tsuruo raised his price target for the stock by 100 yen to 7,200 yen on Wednesday, lifting his expectations for the company’s forthcoming first-quarter earnings and noting that there is “still plenty of room for the shares to advance” given the buybacks and steps to clean up its balance sheet.

SoftBank has already repurchased 500 billion yen of shares based on a resolution adopted March 13, separate to its 2 trillion yen pledge. Under that larger program, it has already formally announced plans to buy 1 trillion yen of buybacks through next March, with Son indicating he hoped to carry out the full amount.

Whether the shares can continue their increase depends on future catalysts, Iwaicosmo’s Kawasaki said.

“The shares will need another catalyst that boosts shareholder value, such as the second Vision Fund,” he added.

Son said in May that SoftBank will use its own cash for the second Vision Fund for now, until an improved investment performance attracts outside partners.

More must-read finance coverage from Fortune:

• If Ernst & Young auditors had done this one thing, they might have uncovered Wirecard’s $2 billion fraud years sooner
• After overbooking flights in a pandemic, American Airlines is now paying passengers to get off
• Should Facebook investors ride out the ad boycott—or cash out?
• Safelite’s CEO on steering the company through crisis—and getting sales back to pre-pandemic levels
• Former Honeywell CEO David Cote just wrote one of the best guides ever on how to lead a company

Our mission to help you navigate the new normal is fueled by subscribers. To enjoy unlimited access to our journalism, subscribe today.

Disney announced last week it would rebrand its popular log flume ride, Splash Mountain, following public outcry that its current imagery is racist. The theme of the log flume—featured in California, Florida, and Tokyo amusement parks—is based on Disney’s controversial 1946 film Song of the South, which critics and civil rights activists have long opposed as racist.

The ride will be rebranded in California and Florida to feature characters from Disney’s 2009 animated film The Princess and the Frog instead. In Tokyo, however—the only Disney-branded theme park in which Burbank, Calif.-based Walt Disney Company has no ownership stake—Splash Mountain’s future remains up for debate.

Disneyland Tokyo is wholly owned and operated by Japan’s Oriental Land Company (OLC), which opened the theme park in 1983. When OLC initially pitched Disney the idea of building a resort on a plot of reclaimed land in Tokyo Bay, Disney was reluctant. The studio had never opened a resort outside of the U.S. before, and executives questioned whether the brand’s international appeal could support a multibillion-dollar park.

Negotiations between Disney and OLC stretched on for five years. Ultimately, OLC raised the money for building the park itself and agreed to pay a licensing fee and royalties to Disney for the use of its characters and design. Skift reports OLC paid Disney an annual royalty fee equal to roughly 6% of the park’s revenue between 2006 and 2016. In fiscal 2020, Disneyland Tokyo earned JPY384 billion, or $3.59 billion.

Since OLC licenses characters from Disney, it’s possible The Walt Disney Company could compel OLC to rebrand the log flume, depending on the terms of the current licensing agreement.

On June 26, OLC executives reportedly said discussions on what to do with Splash Mountain at Disneyland Tokyo were ongoing. Disney did not immediately return Fortune‘s request for comment.

The reckoning over corporate racism currently sweeping the U.S. and the EU has barely made a ripple in Asia; an exception was a massive Black Lives Matter fundraiser by K-pop fans. Few major Asian corporations have spoken out in support of the BLM movement, and some Western brands have long deployed a double standard over racial prejudice while operating in Asia.

Colgate, for instance, co-owns a toothpaste brand in Asia that, until 1989, was called “Darkie” in English and featured a man in blackface as its logo. The toothpaste, now known as Darlie and bearing a less obtuse logo, is sold under the brand name Heiren Yagao, or “Blackperson Toothpaste,” in Chinese. Under pressure from activists in the U.S., Colgate announced it would rebrand the Chinese packaging just this month.

Meanwhile, Disney, which views Song of the South as too controversial to show in the U.S.—the studio has never released the movie on video or DVD in the U.S. market—released the film as a home movie in the EU and Asia, including in Japan, in the early 1990s.

The movie is based on author Joel Chandler Harris’s collection of Uncle Remus stories and is accused of glossing over the reality of slavery in the U.S. In the Disney adaptation, Uncle Remus—a Black man living on a Georgian plantation—regales a young white boy with stories of a trickster hare, Br’er Rabbit, and his dim-witted nemesis, Br’er Fox. The scenery surrounding Splash Mountain features characters and music from Song of the South.

More must-read international coverage from Fortune:

• Corporate Germany has a race problem—and a lack of data is not helping
• George Floyd protests force Britain to reckon with its role in slavery, leading some companies to pay reparations
• The insurance case that helped end the slave trade
• George Floyd protests, coronavirus face masks pose challenges for facial recognition
• From beekeepers to giant pension funds, activist shareholders are being silenced by the coronavirus

The market for initial public offerings is surging again, but so is the appetite for its disruption. On Monday, the New York Stock Exchange proposed amending its rules to make direct listings—an alternative to the IPO that has gained some support over the past couple of years—a lot more attractive for startups.

Until now, companies that have gone public via direct listings have been able to sell existing shares directly to investors but not issue new shares in the process. This is how both music-streaming service Spotify and workplace messaging tool Slack, pioneers of the direct listing, went public on the NYSE. The change in rules, though, would enable companies that pursue a direct listing to issue new shares while going public, meaning they would be able to raise new capital. That is, of course, if the Securities and Exchange Commission approves the amendment. (So far, the SEC has declined to allow companies to raise capital via a direct listing.)

The NYSE has an obvious interest in urging more companies to go public, whatever route they pursue. While IPOs are up, relative to the stall in activity in the first few months of this year, the general trend over the past few years is that more and more startups are opting to wait longer before going public. Plenty of founders and venture capitalists are bullish on direct listings, seeing it as a way of providing a cheaper and more efficient way to enter the public markets. But they are also hoping that the traditional IPO path could ultimately be disrupted too. This may happen, especially in light of the changes that the COVID-19 outbreak has forced upon the industry. One small example: The time-consuming (not to mention pricey) so-called IPO road show has gone virtual because of the pandemic.

Which changes stick and which don’t remains to be seen. Fortune recently caught up with John Tuttle, vice chairman and chief commercial officer of the NYSE, for a wide-ranging conversation about some of the ways that recent events, including the pandemic, are already impacting how the exchange operates. Here is an excerpt of the interview. (A note: The interview was conducted before Monday’s amended SEC filing that aims to enable companies to execute direct listings with a capital raise.)  

Fortune: You recently reopened the trading floor. How is it running today?

Tuttle: The floor is great, and the NYSE is doing great as well. After a roughly two-month-long temporary shift to electronic trading, we made the decision to have a thoughtful approach to reopening. We’ve engaged several public health experts and felt it was time to reopen the trading floor. We reopened the trading floor to about 25% capacity. In phase 1, we focused first on allowing floor brokers back in. For people like the designated market makers, who help with direct listing, they can do a lot of their functionalities remotely.

No more handshakes allowed on the floor, though, right?

We follow the rules. We have PPE [personal protective equipment]. We do screening and a questionnaire when folks come in.

It’s a bad time to do a lot of things right now, given the job market and other metrics. Is it a good time to go public?

The capital markets throughout this pandemic have remained open. This has provided capital to companies. That’s like oxygen to companies. We’ve kept our market open, and we first saw some secondary offerings [an issuing of shares by a company that has already made an initial public offering]—either defensively or opportunistically. Then we saw IPOs coming back to market, including some health care companies, which makes sense. Now we’re seeing tech with more predictable [enterprise sales] business models that are easy to understand. There’s less risk of customer attrition and more resiliency in a downturn with these.

Lots of companies are taking a stand against racism. How do you see your role in improving economic racial disparities?

We obviously don’t tolerate racism or any discrimination. And we recognize that we have a very visible platform—NYSE companies employ 43 million people. Diversity has been a focus of ours for a long time. We launched a board advisory council, a group made of CEOs from across geographies and industries, to increase diversity across corporate America. [The council, which connects companies with diverse board candidates, was announced in June 2019.] We’ve created an entire database that we’re making available to our listed companies. And now we are opening it up to private companies who are interested in finding independent directors.

How does the move to remote work impact innovation and startups being founded going forward? And how does that, in turn, impact the NYSE?

For thousands of years, people have thrived by coming together to share ideas. To really grow and innovate it requires people to come together. The new normal may require more remote work, but it’s human nature to come together.

We were hearing so much about direct listings before the crisis. What happens next?

We remain committed to providing new and innovative pathways to access the capital markets, including direct listings.

More must-read stories from Fortune:

• Why black-owned businesses were hit the hardest by the pandemic
• 6 reasons Boeing’s financial picture may be brighter than most assume
• Looking to invest in companies that care about equality? This NAACP-backed ETF may be the answer
• The insurance case that helped end the slave trade
• This was the most out-of-stock product on websites in May