Toby Howell
Appearances
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
As for the next two regions of the bracket that are dropping today, I'm looking at number 13, Pokemon Go craze versus the number four, Cambridge Analytica scandal. I think Pokemon can upset that one there. And then in the 2019 to 2025 region, number nine, the Aris Tour versus number eight, Nvidia becomes the most valuable company Brutal first round matchup.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I think that we're trending in the right direction, but you've got to keep this momentum going. Right now, an estimated $9.1 trillion would be needed to ensure that all 18 categories within this report would reach a, quote, state of good repair, as they call it.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Right now, in 2024, the AASC estimated that only, and I stress only there, $5.4 trillion of investments will be made through the year 2033. There is that $3.7 trillion gap between what they think we need versus what we're outlaying there. How do you sell that, though, to American people? They said that it is efficient use of tax dollars.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Then Napster, yes, that Napster, is back after being acquired for a sum of money that is much bigger than you'd think. It's Wednesday, March 26th. Let's...
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
They think that poor infrastructure costs American households around $2,700 a year. And if you kind of improve on some of those specific categories, it could save Americans money as well. So maybe if your roads are more efficient, if your drinking water is more efficient, if your dams are more efficient.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I love efficient A. I mean, you take it for granted, but it is a big part of infrastructure in America. So they're trying to spin it as saying that these are dollars well spent and we need to keep spending them.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I think both of those could have made a run. But yes, as Neil said, voting is going to run through this whole week on Morning Brews X and Instagram accounts if you want to participate. And we'll see you there. Now a word from our sponsor, Sophos. Neil, remember Fluffy, the three-headed dog from Harry Potter? Scared me to death growing up.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I'm still hanging up this one on the fridge because, as you said, seas get degrees and we're trending in the right direction. So put that magnet on.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
That's an A-plus in my eyes. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines you may have missed. Up first, consumer confidence in the U.S. is officially at a four-year low, with the conference board's index dropping by 7.2 points in March, marking the fourth consecutive monthly decline.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
The Expectations Index in particular, which measures consumers' short-term outlook on income, business, and job market conditions, fell sharply and is now below a key recession warning threshold. Key drivers of this pessimism are pretty much exactly what you'd expect, concerns over tariffs, rising inflation, and job security.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Economists warn that continued declines in consumer confidence could pressure consumer spending, which drives two-thirds of GDP. Neil, these things can quickly become self-fulfilling. If consumers feel uncertain, they spend less. If they spend less, that causes an economic slowdown, which makes them feel even more uncertain. So this is a very slippery slope.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Signal is kind of having a moment amongst the federal bureaucrats in Washington right now. It was mostly known amongst Silicon Valley and honestly, like global nonconformists for leaving few digital traces. But now there are a lot of people within Washington are embracing it as a tactic to protect their own communications. The app has been downloaded more than
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
2.7 million times in the United States so far this year. That's up 36% over the same period compared to last year. So I do think we are seeing this shift towards Signal, and we're going to see it start to pop up more and more because obfuscating official communications is definitely something that doesn't go hand in hand with a clear and democratic government.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
So I think you're going to see Signal as a name to watch this year, especially as it's being more downloaded in amongst the highest levels of our government. Up next, it looks like the main component of 23andMe's DNA is failure at this point.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
After the genetic testing company filed for bankruptcy on Monday, yesterday was another house of horrors as a massive influx of customers rushing to delete their genetic data caused the site to continually malfunction.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Long wait times and error messages greeted customers who were trying to safeguard their sensitive information, especially those who were trying to deal with the data of a deceased family member with a lost password.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Good job, good job. I want everyone listening to think of Sophos as your business's version of Fluffy, without the drooling, of course.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Neil, 23andMe boasts it had 15 million people who provided their genetic information, saliva samples, and personal health history to their database, which means they now have 15 million very concerned people all scrambling to delete that data as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
imagine watching a flight radar or something like that and seeing this plane just do a u-turn that must have been an electric feeling this reminds me of when you were young and you were going to a sporting event and you forgot your cleats or your key equipment and you had to muster up the courage to tell your parents so they would turn around i think that's honestly even higher stakes than this but imagine the feeling of them of the pilot killing guys like i forgot my uh
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
We're going to have to turn this ship around. And the worst part is they only gave passengers a meal vouchers totaling $30 that you could use in the airport when you landed. So for all of this hassle, six hours late to their destination, all they got is a measly $30 meal voucher. Just a house of horrors.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Another is their team of 500-plus cybersecurity experts who are ready to help 24-7.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I think you can just make it sound very official, like due to a documentation error, we're going to have to turn this puppy around. But I think you're right. Egg on the face moment for United and especially this pilot.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And unlike Fluffy, bad actors like three brave wizarding students can't use a sweet lullaby to put it to sleep.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Remember Napster? Of course you do. It made music execs lose sleep, lawyers rake in billable hours, and ushered in the concept of music streaming.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
That very same Napster just sold for $207 million to a company called Infinite Reality, which says it's going to transform the brand into a quote, social music platform, according to a press release, where music lovers can hang out in virtual 3D spaces to watch concerts, join listening parties, and participate in merch drops.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Yeah, somehow Napster is being resurrected as a metaverse company in 2025. Now, to be clear, Napster hasn't been the Napster you remember in a long time. It went bankrupt in 2002 after a barrage of lawsuits. And ever since then, it's been passed around like an illegally downloaded MP3 file.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Best Buy owned it at one point, so did a company called Rhapsody, and most recently, it was in the hands of a consortium of crypto companies. But Napster still holds the licenses to stream millions of tracks, which made it an attractive acquisition target.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
So once more, Infinite Reality is trying to reinvent it, this time with a focus on building this sort of immersive, music-driven 3D social space. Its new CEO, formerly the head of music at Roblox, says artists will be able to create virtual environments that match their vibe, unbound by the constraints of reality.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
If you remember Travis Scott's concert in Fortnite back in the pandemic, that's the vibe they're going for here. Neil Napster back in the year 2025, who would have thought?
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I saw a lot of eye rolling from a lot of publications because creating a metaversal company out of a company that went bankrupt back in 2000 feels just so out of date on so many levels. But they are pretty bullish on this idea of these 3D spaces where you can listen to music in a different way because the vision as a the CEO of Napster described it, is Clubhouse times a trillion.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
I don't know if you guys remember Clubhouse, but that was this app where you could hang out with each other and talk in a virtual space that was just over, you know, that was just audio only. This would incorporate visuals and 3D and merch drops and whatnot. And there have been success here because, I mean, I mentioned the Travis Scott virtual concert in Fortnite.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
That kind of kicked off this idea of virtual concerts. That was attended by millions of people. So there is some proof What else is going on then? It's true. It's true. It was definitely a different time. But I think that they are thinking that there is definitely proof of concept here at some level. So they're going to try to run it back with, you know, clubhouse times a trillion.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Canadians do kind of really help out the U.S. when it comes to their economy because 20 million visitors came to the U.S. in 2024. I mean, it makes sense. They're our next-door neighbors. So, of course, they're going to just pop over the border. Some cities like Buffalo see 35% to 40% of their visitors come from Canada. And it's not just that Canada is feeling this anti-US sentiment.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
They're also just kind of spreading their travel other places. They've seen an uptick in trips to South America where they're just skipping over North America altogether. But also a recent online survey suggested that Canada is feeling more patriotic about staying in Canada. They talked to 1,500 different people, and half said they were less likely to visit the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
this year, and 6 in 10 said they planned a vacation in Canada instead, which is reflecting this sort of broader patriotic Buy Canada movement we're seeing across the retail sector as well. So Canadians might just be skipping out on Miami and staying in Montreal instead.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Right. Atlantic flights depend usually more on U.S. travelers heading to Europe than European travelers heading to the U.S. And right now, U.S. outbound travel demand still looks like it's staying pretty consistent. But still, airlines, hotel groups, tourism... They're all kind of on watch right now because there could be that big reduction in tourism to the United States.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
We've already had two upsets in the first round, so we're beating real March Madness in terms of excitement. Both came from the 2000 to 2005 region in a 5 versus 12 matchup, putting the iPods launch versus LinkedIn's launch. The lower-seeded iPod wiped the floor with everyone's least favorite social media platform.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Add a stable coin to Trump's growing stable of crypto entanglements. The president and his sons launched a new coin yesterday called USD1 through their family company, World Liberty Financial. It's a stable coin pegged to the U.S. dollar, and it's already live on Ethereum and Binance's blockchain. This is now Trump's fourth foray into digital currency.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
There's the WLFI token, which has raised over $550 million for World Liberty. There's a meme coin he dropped before his inauguration, currently sitting at a $2.3 billion market cap. Melania has her own coin, and now we've got this stable coin, which the company says will be backed one-to-one with U.S. treasuries and cash equivalents. Stablecoins are basically crypto's version of cash.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
They are typically designed to stay fixed to an underlying asset, usually US dollar, and provide the liquidity that makes the crypto ecosystem hum.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Everyone from PayPal to Ripple to Gemini has their own version, and Trump's USD1 is the latest player in the crowded field, though the World Life Financial team is trying to separate itself from the pack by actively promoting it as a way to expand the US's dollar dominance globally. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said at the White House Crypto Summit that, quote, we are going to keep the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
the dominant reserve currency in the world, and we're going to use stablecoins to do that. So, Neil, this launch from World Life Financial looks like it's following through on that promise.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Well done. I am glad you brought up cross-border payments there because one of World Liberty's founders said, we're offering a digital dollar stablecoin that sovereign investors and major institutions can confidently integrate into their strategies for secure cross-border transactions.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
That emphasis on international payments actually raised somewhat warning flags because then you can think about, you just go down this thought slope and foreign governments could use the coin to potentially finance curry favor with the current administration, stuff like that. And another concern is a conflict of interest as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Then in an 8 versus 9 matchup, the launch of Gmail barely eked out a win over the AOL-Time Warner merger. My favorite matchup, though, was Martha Stewart's insider trading case versus Enron's collapse. That almost saw Martha pull off the upset, but... Alas, Enron came out unscathed.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
There's a lot of stablecoin legislation that is making its way towards the president's desk, going through Congress that looks like it should pass before August, which technically benefits the company that just launched a stablecoin. So those are two kind of conflict of interest people have brought up. One, that foreign nationals could intermean with our with our government.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
And then two, that legislation that is being passed that supports World Liberty Financial's mission right now. Up next, let's talk about a report card for our infrastructure.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Technology can help us optimize some of life's most basic tasks. We've even got tech to help us brush our teeth.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
It has a dynamic LED touch bar that lets you choose between 16 different brushing intensities from sensitive to deep clean for up to 15 times more plaque removal versus a manual toothbrush.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
You can even pair your Quip Ultra to the Quip app on your phone to get a personalized look at your oral health.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Taking your business international can feel like sailing through a sea of red tape, regulations, and unpredictability. Is attracting global business worth the global hassle?
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
Wise offers 24-7 live support and transaction notifications so you can track your payments in real time. With full visibility of your finances, you can stay in control. And with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs, you'll be able to save as you scale your business globally.
Morning Brew Daily
Napster Sold For $207M & Canadians Are Skipping US Travel
To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's W-I-S-E dot com slash business.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I think PayPal just wants Venmo to grow up a little bit. Venmo is big. Don't get me wrong. I mean, 90 million US users. It's a verb. You say, I'll Venmo you. It's been a cultural staple for years, but monetization has always been a challenge because most transactions that happen on Venmo are generate very little revenue from the company.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
They do think they can get to that $2 billion number, but you're right. PayPal has been absolutely going through it recently. Like it's market cap has just taken a massive hit. Even though Venmo is a verb, it's not unimpeachable. You're right. Cash app, sell Apple pay. These have all been gaining ground on it. Uh,
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
through just sometimes things as simple as bank integrations, but also they have maybe a wider range of financial services than Venmo has.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
So yesterday, PayPal was trying to outline its strategies to position Venmo as not just a default app for these peer-to-peer transactions, not just sending your buddy $5 after split a pizza together, but for spending, for saving, for becoming what the company described as the go-to money movement app.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. And LinkedIn is a platform for known for its tools that help you target by industry, role, and company. But if you really think about it, that means its real benefit is all the wasteful stuff it can help you avoid.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Yeah. And I do think one critical element, too, is getting more merchants to sign up for the platform as well, because how many places you go to and you see pay with memo, it's not like the first place.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
option that a lot of people choose but they get greater business by having more merchants on their platform because higher transaction volume means more profit and then also they want to increase the likelihood that you know people will carry a balance in their Venmo account because the company does earn interest on users account balances so these are all things that they just want to grow the transaction pie here beyond again
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
just sending money back and forth between your friend group. They want you to show up to a store and buy something with Venmo. They want you to use your Venmo debit card. They want you to use this product in ways beyond the way that most people are currently using it.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I mean, you say you're a data nerd. PayPal is a data nerd as well. You're absolutely right on that front.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Now, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines you may have missed. Up first, President Trump announced a new gold card program yesterday offering wealthy foreigners a path to citizenship for the low price of $5 million.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
This initiative is set to replace the existing EB-5 visa program and aims to attract high net worth individuals from around the world who could provide a boost to the US economy. Trump also speculated about how much revenue the sales themselves could generate. If 1 million people decided they wanted a gold card, that is $5 trillion in revenue right there.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
10 million people, and suddenly the national debt is gone. Obviously, those numbers are speculation at this point, but the idea is to attract job creators and high-level global talent while generating revenue for the United States in the process.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I guess the idea is, one, you generate revenue from people buying a $5 million path to citizenship, but then also those people are taxpayers when they come in and live in the United States. This also is just kind of a... continuation or just like a reformulation of this EB-5 program that I spoke about. That program was founded all the way back in 1992.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
It grants green cards to immigrants in the United States who make a minimum investment of a million dollars or $800,000 if they're in these economically distressed zones. So this is Kind of like a rebranding of that program. It's just like this direct cash payment instead of, you know, that million dollar investment.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Jacks up the dollar amount a little bit, but it is semi a continuation of that EB5 or a replacement of that program.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Inefficient and wasteful targeting is the bane of any company's existence. There's nothing worse than your ads showing up in front of the wrong people.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I mean, I don't know if I have the DIY ability to upgrade an apartment purchase like that. I do think that this is a... Interesting indicator for the economy, because if you just go back to last week, Walmart actually warned that 2025 would be this pretty rocky year ahead. It expected sales to slow down.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
But then here is Home Depot coming in and saying, actually, we're seeing some cracks in this kind of long, dark night in the housing market that we've been seeing for a while now. So you're seeing a little bit of differing opinions on the year ahead because Home Depot is that bellwether of the U.S. housing market and the economy writ large.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
So I do think it's interesting to see both these bellwethers. We talked about Walmart as a bellwether. Home Depot is this other bellwether. We'll see whether one bellwether is a better indicator than the other.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
It's true. I mean, I got nothing right now. So I got nothing to renovate. But I think you're absolutely right on that point. Apple is... isn't hopping on the anti-DEI bandwagon. Shareholders have overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to end the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts during their annual meeting yesterday.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
The proposal was submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank, and aimed to pressure Apple into joining other major companies in scaling back their DEI programs due to litigation, reputational, and financial risks. But Apple's board of directors had recommended shareholders vote against the request, calling it unnecessary.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Oh, come on, Anne. You could totally whip around a forklift.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
And Apple is zigging when a lot of the corporate world is zagging when it comes to DEI.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Finally, more than 60,000 DoorDash workers may be eligible for a nice little payday after an investigation found the company who shuttles your burritos around was using customer tips to subsidize worker wages. Between 2017 and 2019, if a worker was supposed to be compensated $10 on a delivery, but a customer tipped $30, $3, DoorDash would only shell over $7 using the tip to cover the difference.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
That shady practice was eventually uncovered and stopped, but only after 11 million orders were placed. Now, thanks to a settlement from the New York Attorney General's office, DoorDash is shelling out $17 million to New York-based workers, meaning the payout could be up to $14,000 per person. And do you remember when this news broke back in 2019 that DoorDash was doing this?
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Yeah. I remember in 2019, CEO of DoorDash said, we thought we were doing the right thing by making dashers whole when a customer left no tip. What we missed was that some customers who did tip would feel like their tip did not matter. So DoorDash said that their heart was in the right place, but I remember when this came out, everyone was like, wait, you're using my tip to subsidize worker wages?
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
LinkedIn ads, great for efficiency, bad for expanding your vehicular knowledge. If you're interested in testing out LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Ukraine and the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
This is what you're supposed to be paying the company. My tip is supposed to be a tip. It's supposed to be gravy on the top of it. So this is a settlement that tracks back to that time period, 2017 to 2019, but it is DoorDash making their workers whole in this regard. That is all the time we have for today. And thanks again for joining me. It is always a pleasure. Let's roll these credits.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Nawogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is buying all the balloons from Party City and inhaling the helium out of them. It's always fun. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show's production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
reportedly reached an agreement yesterday over access to the country's deposits of rare earth minerals as the two work towards a ceasefire deal with Russia. The deal, which is expected to be signed Friday, will see Ukraine develop their mineral resources, including oil and gas, with the help from the U.S. This framework replaces earlier U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
demands for a $500 billion payout, but is still seen as a way for the U.S. to get a return on investment in Ukraine while potentially opening up access to lucrative mineral deposits. Notably, though, this draft does not include the security guarantees that Ukraine had been pushing for, though U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
officials have said that an economic agreement like this provides a de facto security shield against Russia. More details on the agreement, notably the size of the U.S. 's stake in the joint ownership fund, are still unclear, but Zelensky is expected to travel to the White House to sign the deal in a few days' time.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
But Anne, by removing some of the more excessive demands, like the request that Ukraine pay back the United States twice the amount on any future American aid, it appears that a deal did get across the finish line, one that gives the U.S. a share of Ukraine's mineral wealth and boosts its reconstruction efforts.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Today, Ukraine and the U.S. have hashed out a deal to jointly develop the country's mineral deposits.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Yeah, all this is happening, too, while Russia is trying to court American companies to return to the country as well. Before the U.S. actually finalized this natural resources deal with Ukraine, Putin said on Monday that American companies could benefit from the critical minerals mining and aluminum production projects in Russia. So they were doing a courtship as well.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
But one thing that we have to talk about here is, does Ukraine even have any valuable deposits of these minerals? The U.S. Geological Survey doesn't actually list the country as holding any reserves of these rare earth minerals. Neither do databases commonly used by mining businesses.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
And also, if you just look at total rare earth production, you don't get anywhere close to that $500 billion number that Trump was originally throwing out. Rare earth production is closer to $15 billion a year, which is equal to the value of just two days of global oil output. So who knows how valuable these resources actually are.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
That being said, though, there is a very strategic reason why the U.S. is interested in rare earth deposits in Ukraine. Because right now... Who controls the majority of that market? It is China, and obviously that exposes us to our geopolitical rival. China is the main market for both mining them, but also refining those rare earth minerals. So you can see why there is interest from the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
to tap into these potential, who knows how big these deposits actually are in Ukraine.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
It's Wednesday, February 26th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
For Party City, it is just the usual suspect. Inflation persisting made it harder for their core customer base to go shop there. E-commerce, obviously, is the preferred shopping mechanism of the majority of people now. Physical retail locations are expensive, and it just isn't the business model that works in the modern world that well. That being said, I do want to talk about the people who are
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
curiously looking at all of Party City's locations right now. You mentioned them, Five Below and Dollar Tree. These are essentially scavengers who are looking at a fellow struggling retailer and going, licking their chops and saying, wait, I want to get into your locations for cheap. And Party City is pretty desperate right now because they...
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
are telling the court they have this urgent need to close these transactions because they cannot provide and continue paying the rent on their existing locations. They are saying, hey, we're not getting a great deal here. Five Below deals would include giving them 44 storefronts in exchange for $2 million in upfront payments, plus an additional $70,000 for each lease agreement signed.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
It's not like this big lucrative agreement. Those locations are probably worth more than Five Below is paying. But these other retailers are just saying, this is our opportunity to get into these locations for cheap. And that's why we're kind of scavenging over the body of Party City right now.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Yeah, it's true. I think they're just seeing a really good deal out there for them. And then let's talk about Joanne's a little bit. It's really sad. Pour one out for the craft store. I need crafters out there just have a soft spot for Joanne's.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
And it was actually, they almost were, they suffered from their own success because during the pandemic, they had this huge boost in sales because everyone was just stuck at home, you know, knitting, crocheting. I'm sure I took up calligraphy. I was going to as well. Yeah, I took up calligraphy. And so it just struggled to maintain that momentum.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
It struggled with this inventory management, just supply chain disruptions as well, and just a shifting consumer taste. So pour one out for Party City, pour one out for Joanne's. The one thing I will say is that franchisees that represent Party City... are saying that they still plan to run their stores.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
So for the foreseeable future, you might see a few Party City locations hanging on because their franchisees are like, we can continue to operate these profitably. So it's not like Party City will be wiped from the face of the earth. You still might see a couple locations dotting around the country.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Remember when everyone feared that Elon Musk might use his position in the government to enrich his own businesses? Well, those conflicts of interest are conflicting after the FAA came to an agreement to use SpaceX's Starlink internet systems to upgrade the IT network it uses to manage U.S. airspace.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
The FAA announced this week that it is testing out a few Starlink terminals, one in New Jersey at the FAA's Air Traffic Control Technology Lab, and two in what it called a non-safety critical location in Alaska. But the FAA's experimentation could quickly grow. According to Bloomberg, Musk approved a shipment of 4,000 Starlink terminals to the FAA last week for this initiative.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
And on the one hand, this is exactly what people are worried about when it comes to Elon's proximity to the White House. But on the other hand, Starlink could very well provide an improvement to the FAA's aging airspace network, something that has been a priority for years now.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I'm so grateful. On the one hand, it is great news for the planet. But on the other hand, you are right. We're probably getting another Fast and Furious sequel. We're probably getting another live action remake of, you know, The Lion King. Basically, scientists were like, if this was an impactor, we would keep seeing the probability rise. But instead, the opposite started to happen.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
For sure. You put it very well. I do think Verizon is a little bit nervous here because they were awarded this $2 billion contract just a few years ago in 2023 to support the FAA. A Verizon exec was asked about this and he said that he does think that... their network could coexist with Starlink. Starlink could fill in some of the gaps that this deal doesn't.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Who knows if that's just him posturing and saying, ah, no, I think we're fine here, or if he's actually a lot more nervous about that. But yes, obviously, this extends Musk's reach into the FAA, which is the body that regulates SpaceX rocket launches. That's another bit of the conflict of interest here. That being said, though, I mean, I mentioned it. The
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
No one is disputing that the FAA systems need an upgrade. They've been attempting to modernize their air traffic controller network for years now. If you go back to a 2023 survey, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found 76% of the systems that the FAA uses were either unsustainable or potentially unsustainable.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
It warned back in December that the agency needed to take urgent action to update them. And then obviously the recent, you know, air incidents that have occurred this year, the one in DC have put an even bigger spotlight on these systems.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
So on the one hand, yes, conflict of interest, but on the other hand, no one is saying that the FAA shouldn't try to make steps towards updating its IT infrastructure.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Up next, we're talking Venmo. So Neil, how'd you do on the morning market trivia quiz?
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
That's pretty good. I ended up getting 3,133.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
And if you land at the top, you'll win bragging rights, a $200 Amex gift card, a newsletter feature, and a special prize. It's a win-win. Have fun and good luck. We'll see you on the leaderboard. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase.
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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card. Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees.
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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
As they observed it more, the probability got lower and lower. It was fun while it lasted. I mean, it was fun to consider the idea of a city killer asteroid. I mean, I don't know, fun. Fun is not the word. It was exciting. You know, it added a little excitement to our life. But you know what? Those iCloud storage payments are still going to hit next year. You know, nothing is coming to end it all.
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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
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Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I touched my toes for the first time.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
which is why we love Brooklinen. Shop award winners and fan faves in-store or online at brooklinen.com. That's B-R-O-O-K-L-I-N-E-N.com. Get 15% off your first order today. If you were to guess what the most common complaint of professional tennis players was, you might think it would be bogus line calls or how challengers portrayed the sport.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
They've been working a long time. Now a word from our sponsor, Sophos. Neil, the NCAA tournament is kicking off in earnest tomorrow, and I, for one, know exactly who I am picking. Florida, Duke, or Cinderella? No, I am simply picking the team with the best offense and the best defense. That is not how it works, Toby.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
But more than likely, you'll hear something along the lines of, we play way too dang much. The tennis schedule runs 11 months of the year and has been a huge source of headaches for top players for years, among other working condition complaints. Enter professional tennis's live golf moment.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Remember live the Saudi backed breakaway golf tour that lured top players with the promise of bigger prize pools and smaller schedules. While a group of pro tennis players led by Novak Djokovic is escalating the fight against the existing men's and women's professional tours and advocating for similar demands.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yesterday, the Professional Tennis Players Association, PTPA, brought legal action against the men's and women's tours, along with the International Tennis Federation, alleging that they were colluding to restrict players' earnings and were engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
The PTPA is chasing player empowerment initiatives like reducing the grueling number of tournaments played, bringing consistency to tennis balls across tours, and fixing the insane scheduling that often leaves them playing well into the middle of the night. To add insult to injury, tennis also gets minuscule prize payouts compared to other big sports like golf.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Phenom Carlos Alcaraz recently joked, they are going to kill us in some way. And this suit from the PTPA is a step towards a future where top players don't need to make jokes like that, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And I do think a difference between tennis and a lot of other North American sports league is that those North American sports leagues have very powerful players, unions. In tennis, it's very splintered across many different tours, international tennis federations involved as well. The Grand Slam tournaments are another thing altogether. Prize money isn't very standardized.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And players kind of operate as these independent contractors. And as such, they get pretty bad working conditions. And again, I mean, take it all with a grain of salt. These are still professional athletes at the top of their field. But one of the co-founders of the PTPA was this Canadian tennis pro.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And he said, early on in my career, I've been very fortunate in my career, but I still had to sleep in my car while traveling to matches early on. And he goes, imagine... We saw that in Challengers. Right. Imagine the NFL player at the top of their league sleeping in their car at an away game. It would just never happen.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Well, you can in cybersecurity. With Sophos, your business gets both elite defense and expert offense.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So they're trying to draw these parallels to other sports and saying like, hey, our working conditions are not nearly what they should be given the demands put on our bodies and our travel schedules.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
I think so, although now I want to try an oven-ready gammon joint because we had never heard of that before this, but it looks delicious. I do think it kind of presents a snapshot of where the nation is heading, and right now it seems like a very time-impressed nation, a very tech-forward nation. The reason why they got rid of oven-ready gammon joints is because they take a lot longer to prepare.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Pulled pork is something that is quicker. By the way, all the things they added sound like a heck of a party. I mean, we're talking yoga mats, pool sliders. Virgil of reality has come. Special reality headsets, some pulled pork, toss a mango in there, too. That sounds like a good time to me. So, yes, this isn't a big deal. Like, only 3% of the total basket of goods was actually affected by this.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Plus, their AI-driven tech is kind of like a point guard in the way it is constantly adapting and learning how to respond to threats before they become threats.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
But every time these very niche, very specific goods come and go, like, it's fun to talk about. It's a time capsule. It is a time capsule. Up next, Sherpas in Nepal are getting some Sherpas of their own as they lug goods up Mount Everest.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Ahead of the main climbing season that begins in April, some expedition companies have been testing out drones that can carry loads of up to 35 pounds even in the thin air of Everest. The use cases are attractive, including bringing back ladders used on climbing routes and waste disposal, which has become a huge issue as Everest has grown more popular.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Being a Sherpa is a dangerous job as is, so having drones step up to help shoulder the load makes a lot of sense, especially for things like emergency supplies that can be transported from base camp one in 15 minutes rather than seven hours on foot. Seems smart, especially if they can make Sherpas jobs safer.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
I think he does. First of all, it was a little shocking to hear a governor talking ball like this. He was going through quad one wins, just running down the resumes of both teams. But, He has a point because there's real monetary stakes on the line. Teams earn units for each game they play in in the NCAA tournament, and each unit is worth approximately $2 million that gets paid out.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Let's go, Blue Devils, and let's go to Sophos.com to learn more. That's S-O-P-H-O-S dot com.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So it's depriving West Virginia of a game. You're depriving them of revenue as well. So yes, I would be very mad as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And then, yeah, UNC's AD is the chair of the selection committee, and even though the selection committee came out and said, hey, he was not in the room during any deliberations involving UNC, a lot of people are saying, well, he was in the room for deliberations involving WVU, so there's potentially a conflict of interest there.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So, yeah, to add insult to injury, too, Indiana just poached West Virginia's coach as well, so the hits keep coming for the Mountaineers.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
I want you to share the pod with a West Virginia fan. I am on your side, guys. You may have missed out on the NCAA tournament, but you got this pod instead. Seems like a fair consolation prize.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
It is a landmark deal. It does show a potential sign of hope for the merger and acquisition market because this new Lena Conlis FTC might be exactly why this deal got done and why it didn't get done at that $23 billion valuation last year. This is its biggest deal ever, so it's definitely going to test the appetite of Trump's administration's antitrust efforts because they believe
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
When Trump originally joined office, they thought it was going to be a boon for M&A deals. That has been maybe not the case so far early in the year so far. So putting one of the biggest tech deals of all time up for antitrust scrutiny, that will really show what the kind of – purview of this new administration will be. So that's one big reason why this was a big deal.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And the other is that Wiz offers a lot in the terms of the cloud computing race that's going on between big tech right now. Obviously, Amazon and Microsoft dominate the space right now, but Google Cloud is trying to claw back some market share.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So this acquisition is definitely going to help boost its efforts in cloud computing, which is obviously a huge growth sector for a lot of these big tech companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Right. And if you are a business that needs cloud computing, one of the things that you're looking at, one, obviously there's price. And so you look at AWS, you look at Microsoft's Azure cloud, you look at Google cloud. But now if Google can come to you and say, hey, we're going to provide the most secure cloud, that is a huge leg up in this race for supremacy in cloud computing.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And it's also actually one of Wiz's big factors is that they work with a The flexibility that Wiz allows is something that enterprise customers like to see. And so even though Google is buying this, they're still allowing Wiz to work with Azure. They're still allowing Wiz to work with AWS because that flexibility is a selling point. So they're not just hoarding Wiz for themselves.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
They're still letting it work with other customers. But I think that's a smart way to get a bigger piece of this very lucrative pie.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Somehow Bernard Arnault, the founder or the patriarch of LVMH, also got on the cap table. So people were kind of ironically saying, oh, thank goodness like Bernard got on this one. But you're right. It is finally this liquidity moment for an industry that's been very stuck up and very clogged for the last few months and years or so.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
There is a crisis developing in HR, but don't worry, it has nothing to do with what happened at your holiday Christmas party. Rippling, an HR startup, is suing Deal, also an HR startup, over a bout of corporate espionage. Rippling is accusing Deal of installing a mole inside its company and sending him digging around for trade secrets.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
The so-called spy is an Ireland-based employee who is snooping through Slack channels way outside his job description, according to the suit. One of the more egregious examples was the frequency in which he was searching for Deal in internal channels, as many as 23 times a day, in addition to downloading strategy decks and allegedly passing that info over to Deal.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
When Rippling noticed the abnormal Slack activity, they set up what's known as a honeypot to attract and ensnare the alleged spy. Execs created a fake Slack channel pretending it was a secret space where employees could trash talk deal. Then they baited the potential mole with an email hinting at this juicy channel.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Today, Google eased on down the road with a record-breaking acquisition of Wiz. Then pro tennis players are not happy with their working conditions and are suing to do something about it. It's Wednesday, March 19th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Just hours later, their suspect went looking for it, proving at least to Rippling that deal was up to something dodgy. Deal, for its part, fired back against the allegations, saying weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia, inciting falsehoods about Deal, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yes, there are Russian sanction violation involved, too, somehow. This isn't two minnows duking it out, either. Rippling is worth $13 billion, while Deal sits at $12 billion valuation. Neil, with a spy on the loose, too, apparently.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Right, it really doesn't. I mean, this honeypot operation is crazy. Imagine the rush that these Rippling execs must have gone through. You set up this fake Slack channel and you see them immediately kind of lurking around that. You can see the activity of this employee within Slack. And so they made a literal honeypot to ensnare and basically just catch the person in the act.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And I do think that this tensions between Deal and Rippling, they've been playing out publicly way before this lawsuit. Last year, Rippling launched this marketing campaign deal. It was a full custom-built snake game where it portrays Deal as this greedy snake and accuses them of charging higher fees. They also saw a Deal's sales director visited the site to check out the game.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And then later, the CEO of Rippling posted that he had visited the site. Everyone kind of said, ah, you're kind of doxing this guy now. So this is like knock-down, drag-out battle, because you are right, the HR space is so competitive because of all these legacy players.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
When times are good, there's enough HR to go around, but when times start to get a little tighter, you start to see some of these more aggressive tactics because people just don't splurge on HR tech like they might when times are better.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Gravity is undefeated. One of the coolest parts of a splashdown off the Gulf Coast of Florida is civilians generally know where it will happen. So some boaters kind of get out there and try to watch it. But SpaceX and the Coast Guard, they work to keep them away so they can do the retrieval safely.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
So I do think that there's so many layers to this feud, and the fact that there's a spy involved now is just one of the juiciest corporate espionage cases that we've ever talked about.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
I don't know if that was the biggest announcement as much as a cheesy gordita crunch sounds delicious right now. Probably the biggest takeaways from yesterday's meandering two-hour speech. For one, the next generation of chips are here. Jensen unveiled the Blackwell Ultra AI chip, which is just a step up from its existing Blackwell chip.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
He then unveiled the next generation of AI chips called Rubin. That's actually named after the astronomer who discovered dark matter, which is pretty cool. That Ruben chip will sport 3.3 times the computing performance of Blackwell Ultra chips. So it's just a continual wave of upping performance, upping the capacity of these AI chips.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And then, yeah, also a big theme was the physical arena that NVIDIA is stepping into. We talked about GM. partnership to develop self-driving cars, but also Jensen says that the age of robotics is here and they brought robots on stage. There's a partnership with Disney involved as well. So he's trying to lay out a vision of a future of AI interacting with the physical world.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
And yesterday was a big unveiling of that vision.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
But you can't control what happens under the water, which is why it was very funny that this huge pot of dolphins swam up while the retrieval was happening. They're curious animals. They just wanted to see what was going on, but not a bad unplanned welcome crew after 280 days up in space. I hope Suni and Butch just kick back, watch some NCAA tournament games, and just do nothing for the next days.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yeah, if we had to break down that speech into two things. One, he was reassuring people that AI will deliver on its potential, stuff like how AI systems are providing value to people right now. But then also, he dwelled on some of those futuristic uses of AI too, which is stuff like the human-sized robots that can walk, pick up things, and the self-driving cars.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Yeah, part of it was like therapy session for the whole industry saying, we're fine, we're still gonna need, these chips are still very much necessary to train models, even if they are cheaper, like deep sea kind of revealed. But then also, look at the future, like a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline. Up next, why tennis players are not happy with the current state of the tour.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Closes Historic $32B Deal & Nvidia Drops Hot New AI Chip
Brooklinen sheets are tried and true fan faves with over 200,000 five-star reviews. And Brooklinen has been tested and awarded by podcast hosts and experts alike, including Good Housekeeping, GQ, and Wirecutter.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of strong leaders in your career. What traits do you think are the most important?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability of sophisticated refinement and visceral power. And you can build a Range Rover Sport that matches your leadership style at Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com. That's LandRoverUSA.com.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
President's Day on Monday turned this into a shortened week for some, but since I like the sound of my own name, I couldn't let it go by without getting a Toby's Trend in. So my special Wednesday Toby's Trend is all about OpenTable's plan to become cool again. If you've gone online to try and snag a reservation at a hot new restaurant, you've likely ended up on Resi.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It's owned by American Express and was, at least for the last few years, the preferred place to look for a tough table to book. OpenTable, on the other hand, has far more choices, 60,000 compared to Resi's 20,000, but it's been around since 1998 and has never quite gotten the sceniest places to bite. That is until recently.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It's been luring the coolest restaurants across the country back into its open arms with a combination of newly launched credit card perk programs and some fancy marketing promises. For chef Ian Gray, based in Philly, he told the Philly Inquirer that they basically gave the platform to us for free and wrote us a check as well, a tough deal to say no to.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Thanks to Hustle Like That, OpenTable is suddenly back in the buzzy restaurant game, using cash from a recent Visa deal to lure big names that are helping revamp its image from run-of-the-mill restaurant booker to a platform for more exclusive finds.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
That being said, Tom Brady and the Patriots did come back from 28-3 down when the Falcons had a 99.8% chance of winning based on ESPN's win probability chart. Leicester City did win the Premier League at 5,000-1 odds, which is a 0.02% chance. So, stranger things have happened. Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Neil, it is a brawl out there in the dining industry, an all-out arms race in the two-sided marketplace of restaurants and customers, and OpenTable is making up ground.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Yeah. And OpenTable also did something called the icons program, which is they would go to a restaurant and say, Hey, do you want better billing? Do you want to not be lost in the sea of other restaurants? You can be an icon restaurant on our platform. So that's, we also saw you open it up the platform this morning.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I don't know how many other people are booking restaurants at, you know, five 30 in the morning. But the ICONS program was there. We saw what the ICONS were in New York City. That being said, though, some chefs have said that in the courting process, when they were trying to get us to move over from Resi to Open Table, they were very responsive. They were showing up at our door every day.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
They were ushering us through it. They were giving us huge lumps of cash. But then after we did make the switch, it suddenly became a lot quieter on OpenTable's side, and sometimes the checks took a while to arrive.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So maybe it's not something that they're doing this all-out marketing push to, you know, convert people over, but it's whether you can keep them on your platform, whether, you know, those tables are being filled by these Visa cardholders or they're going empty. That is what will truly come down to what platforms restaurants will kind of, you know, choose going forward.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It's insane what people do to get reservations these days. Our good friend and founder of the company, Austin Reif, has told me that he has used LinkedIn before to message the restaurant host to try to use his clout as a Morning Brew CEO to say, hey, let me have a seat here. So people go a long ways because it is just this battle to get the best spots in town.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Now, let's sprint to the finish with some headlines you may have missed. Up first, Grok3 is here, and Elon Musk thinks the latest model out of his startup XAI is the new big man on campus. In an announcement event livestreamed on X, Elon claimed that Grok3 outperforms competitors like Google's Gemini, OpenAI's GPT-4.0, and anthropics clawed across various math, science, and coding benchmarks.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It also outperforms China's DeepSeq R1 model, which threw everyone into a tizzy last month for its cheap performance that caused a U.S. equities wipeout. Grok3 also ventured into research assistance territory with a new feature called DeepSearch that is XAI's answers to OpenAI's deep research. It can troll the internet and build you an abstract response to a question you have asked.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I was cooking dinner last night, Neil, and I got a little high on my own supply. I thought I could make a coconut rice curry soup without really looking at the recipe. Let me guess. Your broth to rice ratio was way off. Yes. I put way too much rice in. It sucked. everything up and I was left with more of a pilaf dish than an actual brothy soup. Almost made me want to throw it away and start again.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Neil Grock 3 shows that XAI is still very much in the thick of the chatbot races.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I also think this is huge for X, because remember, Elon Musk has completely changed X's business model to subscription-based, and one of the things that it folds into the subscription is access to this Grok AI model. So now if you pay $50 a month, you will get access to Grok 3 first. So it is twofold.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
One, he wants to compete with OpenAI, but also it's a very nice financial boost if you offer a state-of-the-art model within your X subscription.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I can't think of a worse outcome for a company whose founders came from Apple, were kind of LARPing as Steve Jobs, the way they dress, the way they talk, the way they design their product, than to end up integrating your tech into printers at HP. Truly a brutal outcome. If you are an entrepreneur, especially an entrepreneur who raised more than $230 million to create the vice.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So yeah, just, they were getting dragged all across the internet when the pin was released and now they're continued to get dragged. And now that they finally sold off for parts to HP. Another good-for-your-gut soda has hit the market, this time from a legacy player.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Tired of Olipop and Poppy attracting all the headlines, Coca-Cola threw their hat in the microbiome ring, announcing a prebiotic soda called Simply Pop that will debut this month. The timing is conspicuous. Last week, Olipop closed a $50 million fundraising round that values the company at $1.8 billion. Pepsi too reportedly has a healthy gut pop in the works that it aims to launch in the spring.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
This section of the soda aisle is growing and heating up big time, Neil.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Yeah, I don't like the branding, though. All those, what you said is true. Absolutely, Coke's distribution network is just a massive advantage. But if the branding is kind of, I don't know, the word that comes to mind is choogy. It just seems like too millennialized or too, I don't know, corporatized compared to Poppy, compared to Olipop. That
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Definitely have a better finger on the pulse of their Gen Z customers. So I think this could be them playing catch up. They said that they put a lot of time and effort to developing something that tastes good. But if the branding isn't there, then I don't even know if that marketing machine or that distribution machine is as big of a leg up as you're saying.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
That's what I was thinking, too. We did that story about no one can read cursive anymore, so Washington does have a very nice penmanship. But this letter was very interesting, one, because Washington was also striking a defiant tone, saying, yes, we may have lost this battle, but I'm feeling good about where we're at in the war right now.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
He also talks about an inoculation campaign that they were running against smallpox, because smallpox has... decimated the fledgling US Army during that time. So to hear him talking about the first real inoculation campaign in American, or I guess it wasn't even American history at that point, was very interesting.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So lots of interesting tidbits about that time in the war, that time in just the young country that was soon to be America. So Very cool. Historical documents are having a moment, too. I mean, the Constitution sold for $43 million a few years ago. We are seeing just a lot of interest in these very rare artifacts.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I want you to share the pod with someone you've been meaning to get dinner with recently. Open table, resi, it doesn't matter. Just use this as an opportunity to put some time on the schedule. But then maybe tell us which platform you ended up booking with.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Even better, LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Yeah, it has been ominous, but also let's just zoom out here in that it is pretty amazing how... Everyone fared in this accident. The survivability was extremely amazing when you think about the actual accident that occurred.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It looks like the plane touched down maybe with one wheel first, which may have caused the landing gear to collapse, which caused that right wing to hit the runway and then eventually for it to flip over. But let's dive into some of these safety features. You mentioned the seats. The seats not only have that high impact 16 Gs of force that it can withstand, but
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
but they also have legs that are allowed to pitch to either side 10 degrees so they don't snap off. That's when things can get really bad. If these seats do snap off, then you end up falling onto the roof of the plane. So the seats were a big aspect. Also, the way that the plane did eventually break was how it was supposed to break.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Then a move over, Michael Jordan. Kim Kardashian is Nike's newest partner. It's Wednesday, February 19th. Let's ride.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
I know it sounds ridiculous to say this is how planes should break, but wings are designed to snap off, so the fuselage, so the body of the airplane breaks. doesn't come apart. So everything did kind of go to plan, even though obviously the landing did not go as planned.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And then also the background kind of underlying tension to all this is that a lot of cuts have been affecting the FAA. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that 400 FAA employees were fired recently. Of those 400, those zero air traffic controllers or critical safety personnel were let go. So it's unlikely that those two instances are related in any way.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
That being said, though, while all this is happening, while we're seeing just an increased amount of air incidences, you do see the FAA under scrutiny right now for trimming its workforce. And then the other aspect, too, is that SpaceX, Elon Musk's startup, is also coming in trying to look at how to overhaul the FAA's air traffic control systems.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
People are seeing that as a conflict of interest, but SpaceX is saying we're trying to modernize these programs. They've been far too heavily leaned on. They haven't been staffed up properly. They're working with outdated technology. So that is just kind of the background context to these accidents that we have been seeing pop up.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Kim Kardashian is here to save Nike. No, she can't suddenly win a dunk contest or have a VO2 max in the mid-60s, but she does have stretchy, affordable, and fashionable leggings that Nike wants a piece of. Yesterday, this sportswear giant that has been going through a bit of a rough patch recently announced a rare fashion collab with Kim's brand, Skims, called Nike Skims.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
The combo marks the first time that Nike has ever joined with an outside existing company to introduce a new brand. The team-up will be geared less towards the everyday wear that Skims currently offers and more towards those sweaty hit sessions or Pilates classes that you drag yourself out of bed for in the morning.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
The goal is to position Nike to be more competitive in the active wear category that has been taken over by the likes of Lululemon and Aloe. Nike's struggles are well documented at this point. It reported an 8% drop in sales in its most recent quarter and recently bought its first Super Bowl commercial in 27 years as it tries to regain its mojo.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
This collab seems like a step in the right direction, Neil.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And it's also arriving at a moment where women's sports are absolutely popping off right now. And Nike and Skims both recognize this. Skims is actually already the official underwear partner of the WNBA. They're also the official partner of the NBA as well and U.S. basketball. But you are right. It's not just that.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It's not just women in general, but it's specifically the apparel business as well because Nike had $8.5 billion in revenue from female apparel last year, $21 billion in male apparel. But still, their apparel business as a whole is not as big as its shoe business. And if you look at someone like Lululemon, like in Aloe, they are – currently the apparel of choice for a lot of men and women.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And so therefore you say, where can we, where's our growth opportunity? It is an apparel. And then you look deeper and it is specifically in women's apparel.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Yeah, Skims was valued at $4 billion in 2023. I would imagine after inking this partnership, it's going to be worth a little bit more.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Meta wants more control over how it kind of manages its own services because TechCrunch found that Meta accounted for 10% of all fix and 22% of all mobile web traffic across the world. You guys are scrolling on Instagram way too much. I know, it truly is. I mean, there are billions and billions of users, so that figure does make sense, especially the mobile figure.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
So, of course, it wants more control over how that traffic is being ferried undersea across these cables. But there's a lot of issues with undersea cables, let's be honest. One, there's a lot of damage that can happen. It's the bottom of the ocean. It's a very unforgiving place. But also, geopolitics comes into play a lot more than you'd expect.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
We already saw Red Sea cables cut last year by Houthi rebels, and then also the European officials have said Russia's been sabotaging our cables. Taiwan has said similar things about China damaging its undersea cables. So Meta has thought about this. They're trying to get around those issues by, one, maximizing the amount of cables that they lay in.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
into deep waters, and we're talking really deep waters, 7,000 meters deep. And they also think that they've cooked up some new burial techniques that they hope will reduce the faults in high-risk areas, whether it's high risk just from ocean geography or high risk from geopolitics. So they think they've thought of everything, but still a lot of cable stretching a lot of miles.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Geez, Neil, get the heart rates going early in the morning just to put that 3% in perspective. If we were playing poker, Earth currently has aces, the asteroid has the 4-5 of spades, and the flop is ace, 8-9, no spades. So yes, technically... A 6 and a 7 could come out next to give the Asteroid a backdoor straight, but more than likely the set of aces is going to win.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And then one final X factor in this announcement is India, actually, because if we go back to last week, Trump had this sit down with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. They listed this big list of different areas that the U.S. would collaborate with the United States. And in that announcement, they actually had just kind of a throwaway line about this, you know, Waterworth project.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
And I think a big kind of factor that you have to include in this is that AI data centers and cloud services in India is a massively growing industry. Meta is looking at that industry and saying, what if we are the ones that connected India to the rest of the world, connected all these data centers coming online? So I do think that is...
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
Kind of something that Mark Zuckerberg is looking ahead in the future and saying, where is the growth capability? It looks like it is positioned in India, which is why you heard this project actually teased last week in a sit-down between Trump and Modi. Up next, we have a surprise edition of Toby's Trends coming your way. Tasty Trade puts traders first.
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
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Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
It's no wonder Investopedia named Tasty Trade the best broker for options in 2024.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Flexible plan options let you choose the data amount that's right for you. And all plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text on the nation's largest 5G network. Mint Mobile's plans are BYOE, bring your own everything, so you can bring your phone number with you and keep existing contacts.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Maybe Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
It does not hurt at all. I'm sure a lot of West Coast skiers in the United States are rolling their eyes listening to this right now and saying, too much snow. Oh, poor Japan. Because Japan really is kind of the next... iteration of this ski boom that we see go across the road. North America has been struggling with warmer winters. They've been struggling with melting glaciers.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
And if you want suave, Good Night and Good Luck starring George Clooney starts previews this week. So a lot of good Broadway out there right now, even if it may cost you an arm and a leg. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil, were you a jock or a nerd in high school?
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Skiing has become unreliable in the Alps and in the Rocky Mountains. So you are seeing these things where ski ticket prices are just absolutely exploding, 200 plus per day at resorts like Vail, Aspen, and Whistler. So you look over at Japan, they have lower costs due to the weak yen compared to the US dollar. They have a more reliable snowfall.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So it makes for a lot of long-term tourism growth there. Japan's ski industry is less dependent on artificial snowmaking. So you are just seeing this absolutely explode on the world scene. And a lot of travelers are flocking over there because of things like reliable snowfall.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
And I do think that Japan is a little bit at risk of having what happened to the North American and European ski industry happen in Japan because these resorts are starting to get more crowded, which means that real estate costs around them are going to go up, make it harder for locals to afford housing. Also, labor shortages are a big issue in Japan as well because
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
We've talked about this as a larger problem in Japan. It's an aging population, and so to have young ski bums working those seasonal work jobs are not as easy to find in Japan as maybe you find in the United States as well. So the final takeaway is Japan maybe is the future of global skiing.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
There are a lot of factors that are pushing it towards that, the weekend, climate change, global ski industry shifts in general, but it does have to avoid the same pitfalls that these other mountains have gone through.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Right. This is an advancement of one of Trump's stated goals, get rid of the Department of Education. There is a lot of concern, though, if a 50% reduction in stat allows you to continue to serve the people that the Education Department does.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
There was that reiteration that student aid will not be impacted, but there is some concern on whether you can do the job of the Education Department with half of the staff gone. Manchester United is taking the ultimate out with the old, in with the new approach by ditching old Trafford.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
The club announced plans to replace its historic 115-year-old stadium with a brand new 100,000-seat behemoth that co-owner Jim Ratcliffe claims will be the world's greatest football stadium. The project is part of a massive plan that aims to create 92,000 jobs, 17,000 homes, and attract 1.8 million visitors a year.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
I'm sure you dominated, and this is why you're successful, Neil. You contain multitudes.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
While United fans might welcome the upgrade, their real concern remains the club's on-field struggles. As a fan myself, it is tough to see them languishing in 14th place in the Premier League. The theatre of dreams, as Old Trafford is known as, has become more of a nightmare.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
I mean, I saw the renderings. They kind of look like a circus tent, which led to a lot of jokes of, hey, look, there's a circus tent above it and there's a circus going on beneath it. I truly just care what's going on on the field, stadium or not. Just play better. That's all I want.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
They're so bad. I don't understand why you need to get so cute with it that you just completely obscured the brand's name altogether. The issue with New Era doing this is that unlike Fanatics, which had the jersey fiasco last year where the jerseys were way too see-through, they were sweating through, New Era has had a relationship with MLB dating back nearly a century.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Well, no, but it's not just a tech fund or an industrials fund. It's a mix of 100 of the most innovative companies in the NASDAQ. It contains multitudes. Want to know our Quiz Bowl team name? If it ain't Invesco QQQ, then I don't want to know. With Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risk, charges, and expenses.
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They've been supplying its game-used MLB hats since 1934. So this was not just some new upstart company trying to save costs. It really looks like they just whiffed the, I mean, I should say struck out on these designs. I encourage you to go look them up because you would never put it on your head. It just doesn't make sense.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Next time you toss on Severance, check to see if your pet is nearby because while your Audi might love dogs, your dog might not love them back. Fans of the hit Apple TV Plus show have noticed their pets freaking out, whining, pacing, even hiding whenever the series is playing.
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Experts say dogs might be reacting to the show's unsettling sound design, which includes high-pitched beeps and unnerving static, or even its signature blue color palette, which dogs perceive more vividly than other colors. But maybe the real culprit is you. If severance is stressing you out, your dog is likely just mirroring your anxiety, so maybe switch to something lighter like Vodafone.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
I want you to share the podcast with someone who has strong thoughts on Severance season two. The debate has been tearing up in the morning brew office. A lot of it's boring and there's no payoff takes being thrown around. So stir things up in your own group chat by sending this episode as a callous.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosure in podcast description. For more than 50 years, Southwest Airlines built its brand around one simple promise. Bags fly free. But that era is officially over.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Starting May 28th, Southwest will begin charging for checked luggage, a stunning reversal for an airline that once prided itself on being different. It's not just a policy change, it's a survival strategy. The decision comes amid a brutal financial squeeze for Southwest and the broader airline industry at large.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Delta, American, and Southwest have all slashed their revenue forecasts, blaming a sudden drop in consumer demand, rising economic uncertainty, and Trump's unpredictable trade policies.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
It's a sharp U-turn for airlines that have been riding high post-pandemic, only to now face a perfect storm of weak consumer spending, corporate travel cutbacks, and shaken passenger confidence following a string of aviation incidents. And Southwest is far from the only airline forecasting rough air ahead.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Delta's CEO called the start of 2025 a, quote, parade of horribles as revenue expectations crater. American Airlines slashed its guidance and nearly doubled its projected first quarter losses. Across the entire travel sector, hotels, cruise lines, and retailers are all seeing some signs of consumers pulling back.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
For years, Southwest was the last airline standing against the rise of extra fees and nickel and diming, missing out on $5.5 billion in baggage fees U.S. airlines raked in last year. But it did stay true to its identity.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
But after activist investor Elliott Investment Management began snapping up board seats and pushing the airline on missed revenue opportunities, Southwest believes it had little choice but to press the flight attendant call button to try and beef up its bottom line. Neil, bags, they're no longer flying free.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Right. It has underperformed financially. That is undeniable. But with this backs fly free policy, it had a unique selling proposition. It was differentiated in the market and the market had been valuing differentiation at this point. However, when a business underperforms like Southwest was doing.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Management does lose a little bit of wiggle room when it comes to acting differently from the rest of the industry. So with that being said, it looks like Elliott management came in and said, Hey, this is where we think that you guys are leaving a lot of revenue on the table. Obviously the back check baggage industry is a huge part of what makes airline profitable.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Sorry, you've been different for a long time, but now let's fall in line and try to, you know, shore up this business that has been struggling.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Then remember when bags flew free on Southwest? Well, now it's bags fly for a fee. Yep, free baggage is gonzo. It's Wednesday, March 12th. Let's ride.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
And then just to zoom out to look at the airline industry as a whole, Delta, American, and Southwest have all lowered their revenue forecast. Delta slashed its Q1 earnings forecast by more than 50%. American Airlines doubled its projected Q1 losses. Southwest cited softness in bookings.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
And it looks like part of it is because a lot of these airline CEOs are acknowledging changing spending habits where Trump's trade policies maybe have – cause people to pull back a little bit. Goldman Sachs revised its 2025 U.S. growth forecast downward. We've talked about that on the show.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Also, just a spate of recent aviation incidents and safety concerns are making travelers hesitate a little bit. We think back to the deadly crash in Washington in January. Delta had that non-fatal crash in Toronto last month. And Delta has acknowledged that passenger concerns about airline safety have contributed to weaker demand.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So just across the board, you are seeing some softness in this industry.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Yeah, it shows that investors, pardon the pun here, don't have nerves of steel. The big issue is that Canada is the top foreign source of steel and aluminum that is used in just everything that you mentioned. Cars, planes, soda cans. So these import taxes, yes, they could boost U.S. steel makers, could boost their bottom lines, but it also could make U.S. manufacturing a lot more expensive.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Auto industry execs in particular are very nervous about this because of how much aluminum and steel go into their vehicles. So it's Yes, it has been just this one. It was kind of everyone was really scared a little bit yesterday when those tariffs were at 50%. We have backed down a little bit from that down to 25%. But still, it is alarming that for auto manufacturers in particular and U.S.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
manufacturers that their input costs are going to be raised so much.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
And Canada plays an outsized role in the global aluminum market. Actually, most of their aluminum does end up across the border in America. 90% of its aluminum exports go to the U.S. But one thing that is interesting about Canada is that they don't actually have a lot of the raw materials you need to make aluminum. bauxite is actually raw aluminum ore. They don't have any of that.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Most of that comes in from Brazil. What they do have is an abundance of cheap hydroelectric power, which, again, we've talked about it. This is something that gets imported over the border. This was part of the entire spat to begin with. But their hydroelectric power infrastructure makes it one of the top producers of aluminum.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So it's not just that they have a bunch of aluminum ore laying around the country. It's just that they're very good at fashioning it into aluminum itself.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Moving on, yesterday, Greenlanders bundled up and headed to the polls in a hugely consequential parliamentary election, one that will likely shape the future of the Arctic Island and determine just how much leverage Trump has in his latest territorial obsession.
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The center-right Democratic Party won most of the votes, jumping up from 9% in the last election to 30% this time around, while the pro-independence Nalarek Party surged to second place. Their victory signals that Greenlanders are thinking seriously about independent future away from Denmark.
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Taking a step back for a second, let's talk about why Trump and a whole bunch of other world powers suddenly care so much about a mostly frozen rock with a population smaller than a Taylor Swift concert. Greenland isn't just strategically located between North America, Europe, and Asia.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
It's also sitting on a motherlode of rare earth minerals, lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earth elements that can help power the global tech industry for the next century. For the US, it is a tasty proposition. China currently dominates the rare earth supply chain, and Trump has made it clear he wants to change that.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
First, he pressured Ukraine to hand over mineral rights in exchange for military aid. Now he's trying to make sure Greenland's massive mineral deposits don't fall into Chinese or European hands. Meanwhile, Greenlanders are caught in the middle of this geopolitical tug of war.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
The island has been inching towards independence from Denmark for years, and opinion polls show that most Greenlanders do want to be their own country, just not as America's 51st state. So what was actually at stake in yesterday's election? Voters elected the 31 lawmakers who will decide the direction of Greenland's independence movement, its mining policies, and by extension, whether the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
gets its hands on those minerals. So a lot was at stake.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Watch out, Denzel. That was well done. Very expensive ticket prices. I mean, you mentioned the average ticket price, but you can get tickets upwards of $800 to see these two on stage. There's a lot of movie star action on Broadway right now and also coming down the pipeline. This spring, you can come see a picture of Dorian Gray starring Sarah Snook, a.k.a. Shiv from Succession.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Yeah, it is very extreme in Greenland. It's incredibly difficult to access these things, as you said. 80% of Greenland is covered in ice, and there's also not a ton of roads between these settlements. So most of these mining projects must build these huge infrastructure from scratch, which adds to the cost. So you're right, the island only has two active mines right there. The last...
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
A third one closed due to bankruptcy because this is just like the surface of the moon. It's just as difficult to set things up there as well. The U.S. already does have a foothold in Greenland. It is a military foothold. They have an air base there. It's been a military outpost since 1951.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So it is one of those things where we've kind of always had an eye on it because of its strategic importance, but now obviously it's very much in the crosshairs. As it kind of enters this pathway towards independence, you can see from these elections that both those parties are in favor of independence.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
So with that being the case, you see some other multinationals come in and say, what else is there to glean from Greenland? And it is these rare earth minerals. So of course, you're going to see a lot of, you know, fighting over it from the geopolitical powers like China, like the United States, like Russia, etc. Up next, you ever want to go skiing in Japan?
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Have you taken our morning market trivia quiz yet?
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
If you want a sneak peek, here's one of the questions right from the quiz. Which of the following is not a major index? A. Nifty 50 B. S&P 500 C. DKXI 40 or D. Nikkei 225
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And get this, the nine and a half year old Came out of retirement just days before the competition, so what a performance out of Bourbon. Other finalists did include the crowd favorite, Neil, the Bichon Frise representing the non-sporting group. Neil, never heard of a dog called Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
At stake in all this worrying about blurbs is also this underlying fear about the state of publishing and the book industry in general. Remember in 2022, there was this lawsuit blocking a merger between Simon & Schuster and Penguin Random House. And that lawsuit revealed that just how much publishing relies on the top 0.1% of authors that they expect to sell very, very well.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
They put most of their resources and most of their marketing behind the big names of the industry. And what that does is leave very little just scraps over for kind of the rest of the 99% of the book industry. So a lot of authors have come out and say, we still need blurbs because we have no marketing spend.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
This is our one chance to get some advertising for free by hitting up our peers, hitting up our author friends that we know. And a lot of authors say, listen, it's not for people like you and me, Neil. It's not for people just cruising the bookshelves of your random bookstore. We don't care that much about blurbs, but what
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
who does care are people who read professionally, book reviewers who, when they're sorting through a mountain of books, they will glance at the blurbs and say, all right, who did recommend this to maybe move a book from the bottom of the pile to the top of the pile? So it's not as cut and dry as it's just this cronyism and it's just you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It does still have a place in the publishing industry.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
I mean, we said it ourselves, like you probably do not look at it because they all kind of start to blend together like a dazzling display of this and that. It's just the name attached to it. Right. It's even King. Yeah, Neil Freiman. All of this said, Neil, if you do write a book eventually, I would definitely blurb your book because a lot of it is actually just your friends will do it for you.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So if you do have friends in the author community and people joke that oftentimes when you see blurbs, all it does is show which MFA program the author attended to because it is most of your teachers. All that being said, asking for praise is oftentimes a very undignified business, so it is tough for the authors out there, but we'll see if we start seeing less blurbs going forward.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
I think the ultimate flex is publishing a book. No blurbs necessary. Just let it speak for itself.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
But get this, Neil, heel does kind of roll off the tongue. But congrats to Monty. Its owner says it's retiring from the competition on top. What a performance. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, I notice you've been getting into jigsaw puzzles lately. I love it. Very meditative. But you also do them without looking at the picture on the box. That is wild to me. I like the challenge.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
You are seeing just this about face at so many companies because I remember back in 2020, David Solomon made this really big deal at the World Economic Forum. He's the CEO of Goldman Sachs. CEO of Goldman Sachs said that Hey, we realized that the last 60 U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
and European companies in the preceding two years went public without a woman or a person of color on the board, so made this very big deal about instituting these diversity requirements, but now you see the wind blowing the other direction, and they're kind of quietly sunsetting that big pledge that they made back in 2020. Same thing with Deloitte as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Deloitte is trying to toe the line on both sides where they are trying to, you know... listen to the practices that they're hearing come down from the federal government. But they're also, like their UK arm said, we're still committed to its diversity policy. So they're trying to play both sides of it here. For our next headline, CEOs are starting to sound off on Trump's tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
First up, Ford CEO Jim Farley raised the alarm against President Trump's proposed 25% duties on Mexico and Canada, warning that their effect on the industry would be devastating. Speaking at an automotive conference yesterday, Farley said, let's be real honest, long-term, a 25% tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Though Trump paused those tariffs for 30 days early last week, the auto industry is continuing to scramble as it tries to prepare for levies that could add up to $60 billion in additional costs to the industry. Then Citadel CEO Ken Griffin offered up
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
His displeasure at a financial services conference in Florida saying, quote, it's a huge mistake to resort to this form of rhetoric when you're trying to drive a bargain because it tears into the minds of CEOs, policymakers, that we can't depend upon America as our trading partner. His comments came after Trump signed an order that would impose 25 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So, Neil, in the case of Griffin, those comments are coming from an ardent Trump voter and supporter. So they mean a lot.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
You're puzzling with one hand behind your back. It's like trying to send and receive international payments without using wise. You are choosing to ignore a tool that could make things faster and easier.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
AP Stylebook is not only used by its own journalists either. It is used by news outlets around the globe, which is why this has some global reverberations essentially. And yeah, they are saying that, hey, our journalism doesn't just go out to people in the U.S. It doesn't just affect people in the United States. So we are going to continue on.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
offering or referring to it by the name that the rest of the world recognizes it by. That is not the case, though, for Mount McKinley, because Trump changed that name from its former name Denali. That area, Alaska, is clearly in the United States. So Trump does have full authority to change that name. So the AP says it will use the new name Mount McKinley. But I just can't believe how many
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
words and how much ink has been spilled over this gall darn body of water off the coast of Florida here. But I guess you do have to make decisions. When you run a style book, you have to make these decisions. So yes, it might be making a bigger deal out of it than it probably is in the grand scheme of things. But still, these decisions do have widespread effects.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Finally, if you happen to find yourself in Australia attending a Bryan Adams show, our condolences go out to you. Instead of hearing a delightful rendition of Summer of 69, audiences were sent home after a giant sewer fatberg made of grease and rags forced Adams to cancel his show in Perth.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
A fatberg is the technical term for a giant rock-like mass that forms when non-biodegradable solids like wet wipes mix with fat, oil, and grease deposits to create a toilet-clogging monstrosity in sewer mains.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Over the weekend, authorities made the call that the fatberg was menacing enough that it could cause the venue's toilets to overflow, which, along with being a major vibe killer, is a health risk. Neil, a 140-ton Fatberg discovered in London was autopsied to find all sorts of things from ketamine to condoms. A 330-ton one from 2021 nearly took down Birmingham in the UK.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And all told, NPR reporting from 2017 found that Fatbergs were costing London's water provider more than $1.3 million a month to remove. These things are devastating.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Thank goodness you aren't because growing businesses know that wise business is the move. Just like a real puzzler knows that looking at the picture can speed up your process. I'll admit wise business is the move, but you can never make me look at the picture. Don't be like Neil. Visit wise.com slash business to speed up your payment processes abroad. That's wise.com slash business.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
What are we doing here? I know. It is. So where does the term fatberg come from? It's a portmanteau of fat and iceberg. It makes sense. I mean, over time, these things can't be broken down, so they just create these giant blockages. And dismantling them are a huge headache. I mean, I talked about that one in London.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It took eight weeks and 36 tanker loads, each 3,000 gallons each, to remove the debris from the site. And all told, it cost over $100,000 to clear. So it is this big. How do you do it? I think you just chip away down there. You must have to open the sewer main and do it manually. I don't understand any other way to do it.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So it is horrifying to think about that these things are just moving silently underneath our feet.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
I want you to share this show with someone you'd hit up for a book blurb. The person who would gas you up no matter how awkward it is to ask for praise. That is who I want you to share the show with.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Well, Mom, the billionaires are fighting again. Sam Altman and Elon Musk escalated their beef yesterday with the two trading barbs on X in interviews over Elon's last-ditch attempt to hijack a deal to make OpenAI a for-profit company. Earlier this week, Elon shocked the tech bro world by making an unsolicited bid to purchase the nonprofit arm that controls OpenAI for $97.4 billion.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Elon co-founded the multi-billion-dollar startup with Sam Altman as a nonprofit back in 2015, but has spent much of the past few years railing against Altman's plan to convert the company into a for-profit entity. Through submitting a bid, Elon has thrown a wrench into those carefully laid plans.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
OpenAI's board doesn't have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize returns, since it's technically a charity. But by submitting a bid, Elon is setting a public floor price for anything Altman ends up offering, likely forcing him to pay a higher price to take control.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Altman spent much of yesterday morning discrediting Elon's Hail Mary as an attempt to slow down a competitor, reminding everyone that Elon... has his own AI company, XAI. But Altman also took the time to offer up some personal jabs, adding that Elon's whole life is from a position of insecurity and that he, quote, feels for the guy.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Neil, it is real housewives of AI out there with billions of dollars and the future of artificial general intelligence at stake. Yeah.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Yeah, and what needs to happen is the board needs to pick a side, essentially. OpenAI did completely overhaul its board members. Remember the blow-up that happened between Altman and the old board of directors last year? So in theory, right now, the board is on Altman's side. It oversees the non-profit arm, which in turn controls the for-profit business. Also, who is on that board?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
None other than the former chairman of Tor. Twitter, Brett Taylor. He was the chairman of Twitter when Musk made his other unsolicited bid to buy that business and then tried to back out before he was eventually forced to buy the business. So he has a very fraught history with Elon Musk, to say the least. It is just like this.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Brett Taylor cannot escape Elon Musk trying to buy every single business he's on the board of. So The same time, though, the board could hypothetically say, wait a second, this is a legitimate offer. Let's see what you have to cook up, Altman. They can't just dismiss it completely out of hand.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So hypothetically, the board should side with Altman, but you never know in instances when you have billions of dollars on the line.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Then the publishing world is locked in a heated debate over those little blurbs you see on the back of books. It's Wednesday, February 12th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
And then The final point to make here, I mentioned that the board doesn't have a fiduciary responsibility like most for-profit boards do, but they do have an obligation to fulfill OpenAI's kind of legal purpose, and that legal purpose is safely advancing artificial intelligence to benefit humanity.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
So the question of price is secondary to the question of whether this sales fulfills the mission that the nonprofit arm set out to achieve. So it gets a little nebulous there, but that is one other aspect of this that you have to pay attention to.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It is milk, Neil. Also, I have tried Fairlife, and it is very deliciously creamy. A lot of fans do just like it because it's got a je ne sais quoi to it. It's got that creaminess. I didn't even know that it got rid of lactose when I first tried it. You just think it's really... But I think it shows that Coke is on this path towards evolving away from its bread and butter, which is soda.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
They're reading the consumer wins right now that are saying that we want healthier things. We don't want these sugary beverages to be our main thing that props the company up. So we have been seeing them pour money into coffee, into sports drinks. They bought Body Armor a few years ago. They've bought these coffee brands, and now they have this milk brand that
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
I don't think they had high hopes for it when they first bought it. You don't think about milk as a tentpole product, but when you kind of innovate and you add these extra layers that consumers really start flocking to, you see how milk could be Coke's fastest-growing U.S. brand.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Right. It's kind of a good problem to have. What's ironic about this whole thing, too, is the U.S. milk industry isn't doing very well. The sector's been facing the same sort of headwinds that the soda industry's been facing, where a lot of kids and a lot of people just aren't drinking milk anymore. Also, you look at plant-based alternatives, oat milk, soy milk, they have surged. So U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
per capita milk consumption is down nearly 30% since 2010. It does closely mirror the soft drinks industry's fall as well. Since 2000, the total amount of soft drinks consumed in the U.S. each year has sunk by 37%. So somehow we're combining a soft drink company with a milk company, and yet 1 plus 1 is equaling 3 in this instance because of just the approach that Fairlife has taken.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Shopify finally booted the artist formerly known as Kanye West from their platform after the rapper used a Super Bowl ad to direct traffic to a site that only sold swastika shirts. Towards the end of Sunday's game, Ye's ad appeared on screen in markets including LA, Atlanta, and Philadelphia. In the 32nd spot,
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
He told people to go to Yeezy.com, but within an hour of the commercial airing, Ye's website got rid of its normal inventory and instead only had one product for sale, a $20 t-shirt with a swastika on the front. Shopify drew widespread condemnation for Kate keeping Ye's store open for orders throughout Monday before it took the site offline yesterday morning, citing a violation of its terms.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
This isn't Shopify's first scandal either. Despite months-long public outrage, another Shopify-powered store that sells Holocaust-denial merch is still active. Neil, last year, Shopify removed a ban on, quote, hateful content from its user policies, so those recently loosened acceptable use policies are in the spotlight again after this incident.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It's also, you know, created some uncomfortable moderation questions at Shopify particularly, but also it goes beyond Shopify in recent months right now because, remember, they loosened its acceptable use policies last year, but also they're not the only ones doing that.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Meta announced it was ending its fact-checking system in favor of this community note system that you see on a platform like X. Google also has recently told the EU that it's not adding fact-checkers to search results and YouTube videos.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Absolutely nothing compared to Monty. This was Monty's third time in a row representing the working group classification of dogs. Screw the Chiefs dynasty. I'm all in on the Monty dynasty. Hopefully it kicks off a new era for the working group, though. This was its first win since 2004. You also got a feel for Bourbon the Whippet, who is a runner up for the third time at the competition.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
It is part of the climate that we're in right now that it does seem like we're in this loosening of content moderation, which is why sometimes you're going to see these instances like what just happened with Shopify start popping up more and more. And then also, just to zoom out here, this kind of ends the ability of Kanye West, or he's known as Ye now, to, you know, be a force for, you know,
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Any sort of selling of anything, because remember, he had this big collaboration with Adidas that ended in 2022 over anti-Semitic remarks back then. Remember, he had another big deal with Gap where he was going to partner with them to release a line of clothing that fell through as well. So you have seen Ye had a sports industry that signed athletes like Jalen Brown, Aaron Donald.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
They all left back in 2022 as well. So you are seeing just kind of this collapse of the Kanye West economy. Whatever last vestiges there were, it is now completely gone. Up next, what's up with this blurb drama going down on the back of books? This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card?
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase. You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card. Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
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Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
That's a fitting metaphor. What's also fitting is when you can tap into the right network to target the professionals you're looking for.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Turns out that a certain Bay Area city is a little more resistant to doom loops than headlines might have you believe. San Francisco, a place that many were quick to write off in the wake of the pandemic amidst store closures and falling foot traffic, is showing that reports of its demise were greatly exaggerated.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Look no further than the gargantuan store fast fashion giant Zara is planning to open in the heart of SF's shopping district next year. Zara had previously announced the closure of its Union Square location, leading to a bevy of stories about how San Francisco's doom loop was really starting in earnest. But it turns out that Zara had no plans to leave and was actually just moving down the road
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
into a 40,000 square foot store that is nearly twice the size of its old one. Still, some of the negative responses around San Francisco were and still are warranted. Office vacancy rates remain around 35%, well above the national average. And a number of retailers, including Uniqlo, H&M, North Face, and Walgreens, did exit the area around where Zara is doubling down.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Still, Neil, San Francisco, kind of like a cockroach, harder to kill than you'd think.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Technically, though, Neil, the NCAA does not keep a record of the most combined losses by two teams meeting in any one game. But an NCAA spokesperson, when told of the upcoming tilt between Yeshiva and Lehman, said, wow, those are some big numbers. Speaking of numbers, let's hear a word from our sponsor, TaxAct. If you're a sole proprietor business owner, here's a question.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Yeah, the mayor, Lurie, was out yesterday kind of heralding this as the return of San Francisco's shopping district. And Zara isn't the only one betting on San Francisco. Obviously, you have the entire AI industry that's kind of taken up shop there, but also Nintendo is set to launch its second U.S. location tomorrow. on the same street, on a nearby street next month.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And then also you have some grocery stores that are planning to open in San Francisco city center in the winter. And then even some luxury brands like watch brands that I can't even pronounce are setting up shop new boutiques in the union square shopping district in 2024, which is kind of a narrative violation.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
If you think about the headlines that honestly we've talked about a lot of San Francisco's doom loop coming to manifest where retailers leave, people stop shopping, housing prices become unaffordable, and people start leaving the city. That was a real concern for San Francisco. But maybe that concern was a little overbaked.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. If you were mulling over a plan to commit a little white-collar crypto crime, now would be the time to get your fart coins in a row because the Justice Department is scaling back its pursuit of crypto cases.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
The Trump administration has disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team as part of a broader shift in regulatory priorities. The strategy chain is... The strategy change is all about embracing a more relaxed approach to crypto regulation, focusing on people who commit crimes using crypto like terrorism, fraud, or enabling human trafficking, rather than nitpicking exchanges.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Neil, it's all part of this grand plan to shift the US's image from being a crypto buzzkill to becoming the cool crypto cousin, where cool in this case means reducing oversight in the sector.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Up next, it seems like the phrase chicken jockey has become a cinematic sleeper word for today's youths, activating a primal urge to throw drinks and popcorn and turn Minecraft movie experiences into pure chaos. Chicken jockey, of course, refers to the Easter egg in Minecraft where A zombie ends up riding a chicken, which was subsequently translated to the big screen for a Minecraft movie.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And the meme within the meme here that has gone viral on TikTok is to go absolutely nuts when Jack Black utters the fateful words. While theaters are happy to finally have a box office hit on their hands, they are not pleased with how hordes of young moviegoers are behaving themselves. One theater in Washington announced over the weekend that unaccompanied groups of boys will not be admitted to
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
How confident are you that you're claiming every deduction you qualify for?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
due to the antics of prior showings. And multiple reports have surfaced of police being called to deal with disruptive behavior at screenings across the country. Neil, I get having fun, but not so much fun that you're destroying theaters by throwing popcorn in drinks.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, Neil, but this season's theme song was, in fact, way worse than the previous two. So there's a chance that the composer, Devere, here kind of knew what he was doing, and maybe Mike White was the person who was overstepping his bounds. Really, Devere kind of clarified that Hey, I wasn't actually talking about the specific theme song.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
There was just a certain part within the show where I wanted to weave in the familiar, you know, war cry melody from the previous two seasons, because this season kind of departed from that. And so that was kind of like the basis of this tension there.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
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Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And I, and I have to say, I queued up, uh, the, the longer version that Devere wanted to, to put in the show on YouTube this morning and it absolutely slapped. So I might be in the minority here, but I am team Devere and not as much team Mike White in this case.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
hey, I caught wind that a young lad was on the wrong boat. And I just wanted to make sure he was okay. And when he found him, he was already drinking and dancing with the fans. So he was more than okay. I think it's so funny when someone discovers, especially lower league football over in England, because those supporters, they're not in it for the money. They're not in it for their success.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
They're in it for just the sheer love of the game. So to have that just concentrated on a boat and then to attend the game and then to say it, I'm a South End fan until I die now.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
No more guessing, just smarter filing with more savings.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Last year, trade between China and the U.S. reached $585 billion. Together, these two countries represent roughly 43% of global GDP. So it's just a massive, massive problem. portion of global trade that we are now essentially layering attacks on. And here's the thing. China is not backing it down either. In fact, they're digging in.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
They vowed to take, quote, resolute and effective measures after Trump's 104 percent tariffs went into effect. And they also vowed to fight to the end. So it's very, very clear the message that Beijing is putting out right now that we are not backing down. at all. And in fact, they scheduled these counter tariffs to go into effect exactly 12 hours after Trump's tariffs went into effect.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So right around noon today, noon Eastern today, their 34% import taxes will kick in as well. So we are seeing the counter actions to Trump's actions.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Then those 104% tariffs have Americans panic buying iPhones to try and beat the price hikes. It's Wednesday, April 9th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Yeah, but the most difficult part of all this, if you are kind of a global trader right now, is the different soundbites coming out of the Trump camp because the Treasury Secretary Scott Besant told CNBC Tuesday that 70 countries do want to discuss deals with the White House, but then White House Trade Advisor Peter Navarro said... tariffs are non-negotiable.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So you're kind of hearing opposing things, sometimes even in the same sentence from these officials. And then, of course, you have one very vocal member of the Trump camp, Elon Musk, who is not so happy whatsoever with the tariffs. He has fully broken away from supporting this kind of tariff policy. He has said a lot of things about Peter Navarro in particular.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
He's called him a moron, dangerously dumb, and dumber than a sack of bricks. And so If you're the White House, they've kind of done a little bit of damage control. Their press secretary, Caroline Leavitt, when asked for comment on that spat said, boys will be boys and we will let their public sparring continue, which again, sure, you can laugh it off and say boys will be boys.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
But in the meantime, the global economy is kind of hanging in the balance. So you are seeing some tensions start to rise when it comes to this tariff policy.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Let's move on. With the threat of tariffs now no longer a threat and instead a chilling reality, Apple is one company racing to brace itself for their impact. Reciprocal tariffs mean the iPhone maker is staring down much higher costs manufacturing and shipping their phones around the world. That has manifested itself in two ways. First, price hikes could be coming in the future.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Trump's new tariffs on Chinese goods mean the cost for Apple to manufacture an iPhone could jump from $580 to $850, according to a report from Tech Insights. As such, Apple has gone into hoarding mode. A report from The Times of India said Apple's strategy to limit tariff impacts is to stockpile inventory in the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
According to officials, Apple flew five planes full of iPhones in just three days during the final week of March. On the flip side of things, consumers are also rushing to their nearest Apple stores to try and get an upgrade before prices spiral. Multiple sales associates told The Wall Street Journal,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
that they had heard customers mention the tariffs in recent days as a reason for purchasing new iPhones. Now, of course, Apple could end up eating the costs of the tariffs, moving more production to other countries like India, or relying on their stockpile to help offset price changes.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
But Neil, this supply chain dodging and weaving and the subsequent consumer reaction is a perfect microcosm of the havoc tariffs can create.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And still 50% of Apple's revenue does come from the iPhone. So it is very much exposed to this 104%. Tariff, probably the best bet to wriggle its way out of it is do what it did during the first Trump administration, which is try to get an exemption from the tariffs, which, you know, never say never on something like that.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Obviously, it's a little different climate this time around than it was last time. So they tried to diversify their supply chain, but there's only so much you can do when you make 90% of your iPhones in China. And the stock has just been getting hammered over the past few days. It's down right around 20% over the past three trading days. That's $640 billion in market cap wiped out.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And actually yesterday, Microsoft edged its nose ahead of Apple to once more become the most valuable company in the world. So a lot of headwinds that Apple is facing as the biggest company in the world also turns out to be the most exposed to this trade war.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Yeah, Wedbush's Dan Ives predicts that an iPhone entirely made in America could cost $3,500. So yes, out of the cards.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And it's looking like these audit numbers are not going to go up anytime soon because the current administration is targeting. big IRS cuts to the workforce. Roughly 25% cuts are probably in the cards, and a decrease in staffing would inevitably lead to fewer audits. Most of the decline in audits over the last decade is because of the loss of IRS workers.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
Also, the IRS has had a lot more lumped on their plate in recent years, so they can't necessarily focus specifically on audits anymore. They're involved in implementing the Affordable Care Act, other programs like the child tax credit too.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
These are a couple of forces coming together to just basically remove the auditing ability that the IRS once had to the benefit of people who don't want to be audited.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
And also, there's this one study from Wharton that looked into the long-term consequences of an audit, and they found that taxpayers who were randomly audited and owed additional money went on to pay their future tax returns more frequently. Even a decade later, they basically have that memory in the back of their head saying, oh, I was audited that one time. I'm going to continue paying taxes.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
So they have these kick-on effects where the money almost compounds later down the road in saying that, hey, whether you're a high-income or a low-income earner, you end up paying your taxes more because of these audits. Up next, let's talk about a city in the Bay Area that might be making a comeback. you do it.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
In the worst baseball game of all time, both teams came out winners. Still though, Yeshiva's 100 straight losses are not even close to the worst losing streak of all time. That belongs to the Caltech Beavers. From 2003 to 2013, lost 228 consecutive games. I'm sure they were busy designing some world-changing technology so they get a pass.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
TastyTrade's got the advanced tools you need to tackle stocks, options, futures, and more all in one place.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Elon Musk, who was in attendance, got a 40-second shout-out to go along with the two minutes spent talking Doge. That was more than the minute and 30 seconds he devoted to inflation, which was likely intentional. Neil, zero time spent thinking the Academy, though, which thankfully moved things along. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil, I was thinking about longevity today.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yeah, it's a classic enemies to friends arc right here. I do have to mention too that it's not just South by Southwest that made them roll out in Austin. It's also symbolic because that is the backyard of Tesla and Elon Musk because Tesla reincorporated its headquarters in Austin, Texas. So Waymo is kind of
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
planting its flag in its backyard and saying, hey, we're hitting the streets of Austin before you are, Elon, with your fleet of robo-taxis that it plans to roll out in June. So really, I think there's two races going on here. One, there's the autonomous vehicle supremacy race between companies like Tesla, companies like Waymo, and a few other challengers.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
But then there's also a race between the provider networks, think Uber, think Lyft, who manage and dispatch the vehicles because Lyft is also planning to add robo-taxis to its network in Atlanta later this year. They are partnering with a different company called May Mobility. They hope to have self-driving cars in that market as well as Dallas. by next year.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Uber has also joined forces with AVRide to begin dispatching robotaxis in Dallas next year as well. So I think we are seeing two simultaneous races right now between the people creating the technology and the people dispatching that technology. So the race is on.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
I know, and the one thing that you just have to avoid, though, is those big egg-on-the-face safety moments, which is really the thing that sunk. I mentioned GM subsidiary Cruise. That just no longer exists anymore because it had its California license suspended back in 2023 after one of its cars dragged a pedestrian.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So there is a risk factor here, but so far Waymo's been pretty squeaky clean on its safety record, so it's just looking to continue that momentum.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
This move definitely aligns with the Trump administration's concerns about this area of the world with foreign influence over the canal. So it is shifting strategic, very strategic ports into American corporate hands. But I will say that BlackRock is happy to play America's white knight here because they have been investing a lot in infrastructure.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Don't tell me you're taking magnesium pills and cold plunging. No, I'm thinking much bigger than that about companies that have stood the test of time, companies that make up the Invesco QQQ ETF. It's been tracking the NASDAQ 100 for over 25 years. It's basically been around longer than me. Aren't you 28? Ah, the last three years don't really count, but think about that. Invesco QQQ
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
They acquired this company, GIP, two years ago, which massively expanded the firm's plunge into infrastructure play here. It manages this huge portfolio of energy, transportation, utility assets. They manage London Gatwick Airport. They manage U.S. natural gas pipelines. So them saying like, hey, Trump, I know you're concerned about Chinese influence here.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
What if we just came in and bought these very lucrative, very strategic ports? So I think that Larry Fink and BlackRock are licking their chops saying, wow, what a great opportunity to step in here while also getting the blessing of the current administration. Kraft Heinz is entering the alcohol market, but not with boozy ketchup, thank goodness.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yesterday, the company announced that it will be introducing crystal light vodka refreshers at certain retailers starting this month. They'll come in at a sprightly 77 calories in zero sugar, which Kraft Heinz touts as the lowest calorie cocktail on the market. The idea behind launching a boozy version of its powdered drink additives was that its customers were
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
We're already using them for mixed drinks. Nearly one in five Crystal Light customers make cocktails using the brand's drink mixes already, according to the company. Neil, it looks like in this instance, they're just skating where the puck is already going.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And it's not just that, you know, corporate America is looking at what TikTok consumers are actually creating. It's also specifically beverage companies are seeing how their beverages are being used to make alcoholic drinks. Because think about we've seen these alcoholic concoctions pop up from companies. Coca-Cola has partnered with Jack Daniels to make a Jack and a Coke in a can.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Sonny D debuted Sonny D vodka seltzer in 2023, which is just messed up. to people who grew up drinking Sunny D. And then Vita Coco, the coconut water company, they partnered with Captain Morgan on premium canned cocktails. So, I mean, Neil, you're making a face here. I agree with you on that one. And then PepsiCo and Boston Beer launched Hard Mountain Dew.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So this is definitely a vein that these companies are trying to tap. Alcohol plus insert drink here. And now we have the latest one to come our way.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yeah, that's the craziest part about this. He has this big aversion to needles, but the backstory to why he even figured out he had this rare antibody is that he had his own major lung surgery when he was 14, which required this big blood transfusion. So after his surgery, his dad told him that you're only alive because people donated blood.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
It's one of the OGs of innovation funds. Well, Trump's long-promised tariffs are here, which means that price hikes for everyday consumers like you and me on everyday goods like electronics and gas are looming, unless a compromise can be reached, which we'll get to in a little bit.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So the day he turned 18, the day he was allowed to, he started giving blood. And that's another crazy part. The application of anti-D, this fighting, this newborn disease fighting antibody was not discovered until the 1960s. He started donating in 1954.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So before he even knew he had this magic thing in his blood, before he knew he had the golden arm, he was donating, which to me is just, I call it fate or call it whatever, but it is pretty amazing that he was on this path before he even knew that this path was going to save so many millions of lives.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yeah, I don't like it either because doing a money spread and flaunting your cold, hard Monopoly cash was one of the best parts about playing Monopoly. I do like it from an anti-cheating perspective because we've all played with someone who has skimmed a little off the top when they went to the bank. I do think Monopoly 2 just has this way of evolving to stay current.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
I mean, they came out with Monopoly Deal, which is this card game. If you've ever played it, it usually leads to the end of relationships with your family members. It has Monopoly Go, which is this mobile app. It's done $3 billion in revenue. So I wouldn't bet against this latest iteration of this iconic property.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
I want you to share the podcast with your board game friends. We all have them. They're great at explaining rules, are way too competitive, and could probably use a fun and informative business news podcast to start their day.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
I'm throwing them a bone because as someone who has explained board game rules, everyone's eyes glazed over. So I'm saying that you guys are doing great board game friends.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Target and Best Buy set the mood yesterday, warning that prices will increase following Trump's 25% levies on imported goods from Mexico, Canada, and China, with some hikes hitting shelves almost immediately due to short supply chains.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Target CEO Brian Cornell told CNBC yesterday that they may be forced to raise prices on fruits and veggies as soon as this week due to a heavy reliance on Mexican imports in the winter. Best Buy sang a similar tune, telling investors on an earnings call yesterday that price increases on its gadgets and gizmos aplenty are highly likely due to tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
China and Mexico are the company's top two supply chain sources, with over three-fourths of its products sourced from those countries. The market didn't like the sound of that at all, and Best Buy fell 12% to be the biggest loser in the S&P 500. It looked like the red wedding out there in general yesterday, too.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
The S&P 500 fell 1.2%, with more than 80% of the stocks in the index closing lower today. After a great start to the year, all the post-election gains for the S&P 500 have been wiped out. The vibes were not great yesterday, though later in the day, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick did say that the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
would likely meet Canada and Mexico, quote, in the middle with an announcement coming as soon as today. Stock futures did tick up as of that announcement. But in the meantime, vibes are still not great.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And let's go through what those tariffs might impact. I said everyday goods affecting everyday people, and it really is because one of the biggest things that will go up is the price of gas. Oil refineries process and transport Canada and Mexico's crude to the United States, so they are being tariffed multiple times. And so about two-thirds of all crude oil imports into the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
will take a hit, which means that the Northeast especially could see an estimated 20% to 40% increase in gas prices per gallon by March. West Coast and the Midwest are likely to follow as well. And then also, if you have young kids, you're probably looking at this going, oh my gosh, because 80% of toys are imported from China.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Then Uber and Waymo are teaming up Power Ranger style this week to offer driverless rides in Austin. It's Wednesday, March 5th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So you could see price increases on stuff like, you know, the Mighty Dump Truck that could get a $10 increase, according to Basic Fund CEO Jay Foreman. And then also the auto industry. We've talked about this
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And we mentioned the international response because it has come in hot and fast. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that the 25% tariffs in Canadian imports is, quote, very dumb and vowed to fight back with 25% tariffs of its own. China also announced countermeasures. Those are starting in mid-March. 15% tariff on chicken, wheat, corn, and cotton. 10% on stuff like pork, vegetables,
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
beef, fruits, and veggies. And then Mexico also is scheduled to announce their retaliatory tariffs sometime later this week. So especially the comments coming out of Justin Trudeau yesterday were, I mean, using the words, quote, very dumb is, you know, as in Canadian terms, as about as inflammatory as you can get up there.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
The final embodiment of that vibe that you were just describing, I think a newsletter from the information put it very well. I was reading it this morning and it started with a line. If you're unhappy about the weather in San Francisco, you only have to wait a few minutes until it changes. That line is starting to seem very applicable to the Trump administration's terrorist plans.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
There is this feeling of uncertainty around it. It does change day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, it feels like. So you are right that there is still this uneasiness permeating kind of the business landscape around it.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Yeah, the real fear is that it is a slippery slope. You do not want... political meddling in these supposedly independent federal statistics. You could undermine trust in that federal government data, especially if it is being perceived as an attempt to mask the impacts of Doge's cost cutting on the broader economy. You are right, too.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
We already have those statistics to calculate GDP minus government spending. So why are we putting forth this idea that we are that it is somehow this thing that needs to be separated. We already can separate it. But some conservative economists do see it a different way.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
They think isolating government spending from other economic measures would paint a more accurate picture of the current economy because they were pushing back and saying, under the Biden administration, a lot of the increase in GDP we were seeing was a result of government growth, not private sector growth. So to them, that is growth in the wrong places.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
And they just want to make it clear that we want to separate that off and see what the real economy is actually functioning like. So that is generally the thrust of the argument you're seeing from maybe Elon and the rest of those economists.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Of all the directors' names coming out of your mouth there, I was not expecting that one.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
All right, let's move on here. We're going to take a quick break so you can go refill your coffee, but we'll be right back. We know our listeners are above average. And that means you deserve above average everything, including your savings account interest rate.
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
So what the heck did he talk about? CNN calculated the exact minutes and seconds Trump... spent on each topic. Immigrants and crime got the most airtime with just under 10 minutes, followed closely by trade and tariffs at eight and a half minutes, which we'll get into what he actually said about that topic in our top story.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
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CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
If you're a no-talk-in-the-Uber kind of person, good news, your next ride might be dead silent because it might not have a driver at all. Starting this week, Uber is rolling out self-driving Waymo robo-taxis in Austin, Texas, marking a major expansion for the Google-backed company.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Waymo's RoboTaxis will be available across 37 square miles of Austin, so your next ride from Terry Black's to Franklin's to compare brisket quality might be solo dolo without a driver. If you're not quite ready to trust a car with no one at the wheel, fear not. Uber. Uber is giving you the option to switch to a human-controlled vehicle instead.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
This expansion marks another big momentum moment for autonomous vehicles. As Waymo looks to prove, it can spread its wings beyond Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where it's been cranking out rides. Its robo taxis are now averaging 200,000 paid rides per week, up from about 10,000 weekly rides just two years ago.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Warn of Price Bumps From Tariffs & Waymo Rolls Out in Austin
Now the goal is to keep expanding without running into the kind of safety issues that derailed GM's cruise robo-taxis in San Francisco last year. Neil, with South by Southwest, the big tech and media conference kicking out this week, Waymo is getting a shot to impress thousands of visitors.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
That same reporter went to a nearby Costco, too, and found that they were out of everything except for quail eggs. So it really is becoming a shortage across the board. This outbreak hit grocery stores actually the hardest because a lot of the farms impacted by this wave of bird flu supplied the retail sector. So you are seeing it filter down through grocery stores now into restaurants as well.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
So it is just crazy the prices that we're seeing. I mean, Showing up to a Whole Foods and seeing $12 for a dozen eggs, it is just very jarring right now. And the issue is that people still love eggs.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
People are absolutely trying to find a low-cost protein source, but their main low-cost protein source is now getting more costly than ever, which is leading to just like these bare pictures of grocery stores that we're seeing kind of flood social media as people try to hoard and stock up on eggs.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
I absolutely have thought about raising chickens too because my previous roommates, we had one of those machines that can process food waste and turn it into chicken feed. So we're like, wait, we have chicken feed here. Now should we buy a chicken coop and raise chickens? We did not check with our zoning board, but we looked up the price of like a smart chicken coop. It was $15,000.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
I actually didn't hate that whatsoever. And I think you're right. If Anthropic succeeds at its goal of creating a chatbot that can mimic human, that is indistinguishable from the human, that it has achieved its goal. So it is like this Catch-22 situation that they find itself in. That is better than I could do. I know, Neil, you are absolutely hired. I think it was better.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
It's not worth it. it obviously you can get a cheaper one than that but it does I mean the grand point here is that it's usually even though you think you're saving money by raising chickens there's a lot of other costs that you're not thinking about and a lot of headaches that you're not thinking about as well but all the power to you if you do want to you know raise some chickens
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
And if you think about what Trump campaigned on and what the role of Doge is in the government, it is about shrinking America's role abroad. But then you look at this announcement, which shows a worldview much closer to expansionism than to isolationism. It goes against socialism.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
you know, other words and other actions from the administration as well, because he has talked about a push to own Greenland. He's talked about a push to own the Panama Canal. He's thrown barbs at Canada about making it the 51st state. So even though he campaigned on this idea of isolationism, it does look like expansionism is something that is on his mind.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Also, it is worth mentioning that there's not a ton of legal standing that would allow the United States to unilaterally take control over someone else's territory, not even to mention this forcible relocation of entire population, which would be a violation of international law. as well. Plus, it's just a gargantuan logistical and financial challenge.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
So these were some of the question marks around this press conference that he held yesterday. Apple wants you to hang out with people more, and it released an app yesterday called Apple Invites, which lets you create and share invitations with your friends. Instead of a chunky text message or a Facebook invite,
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
The idea is you create a quick digital invitation that, when it's shared, gives recipients all the info they need about an event, the RSVP button, and adds it to their calendar. Now, obviously, this straightforward and easy-to-use invitation center fits in nicely to Apple's closed ecosystem. For instance, you can create a photo album for people or add a...
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
You read my cover letter too, so you know that that is better than whatever I produced. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. All right, Neil, I've got a confession.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Absolutely. It was definitely what they were doing. I do think, though, that this is something that will probably catch on because everyone's had the problem. I saw some people joking, too, on X saying that this just destroyed the first app idea that every college student has. Like, man, I would love an app that just lets me hang out with my friends easier to do an invitation.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Now it just kind of crushed a lot of those dreams. I think it will be pretty popular. McDonald's is bringing back the Shamrock Shake, and it's hoping another freaky little McDonald's Land character will power sales again.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
After the success of the Grimace Shake, McDonald's said that the namesake behind the viral purple milkshake is reuniting with his long-lost Irish uncle, Uncle O'Grimacy, to promote the newest Shamrock Green Dairy Treat. Uncle Ogrimacy was originally used back in 1975 to promote the shake, but hasn't been seen since the mid-80s.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
The hope is a little magic from the past will be enough to boost traffic to its stores and reverse a sales slump tied to the CDC linking a fatal E. coli outbreak to its quarter pounders back in October. Maybe Uncle Ogrimacy is the answer to all of McDonald's problems this year.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
I've had it. It is good. It tastes a little bit like mouthwash or like Listerine to me because it's so, you know, that wintry green flavor. But I grew up having it and I probably will have it again.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
This is bigger. I've decided to start a business. Oh, cool. What's the business? I don't know yet. What? I haven't figured that part out yet. All I know is it's going global. Of course it is. Multiple continents, multiple currencies, multiple whatever else businesses need. But I'm not stressing about it because I've got Wise on my side. Ah, the account for doing business in other currencies.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
He was a visionary and it is very funny too because he filed for that trademark. They didn't win, but he did get the trademark. He also had the trademark ready to use on the 2014 Miami Heat jerseys. They lost actually, so he has been trying to use this phrase. For his own team. For his own team for years now. But the only time that he's cashed in is when other teams actually use it.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
He actually told ESPN in 2005 that he made around $300,000 off of the trademark after the first Chicago Bulls three-peat. He also cashed in on the second Bulls three-peat. And then when the New York Yankees won three straight World Series from 1998 to 2000, he won. He cashed in on the trademark. And then the Lakers as well, when they won three consecutive titles, he cashed in on that.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
So he could stand to win, or I keep saying he's winning, but he could stand to earn more than $1 million if the Chiefs do win that Super Bowl. But if you are a superstitious Chiefs fan, maybe you're saying, I don't know if I want anything to do with Pat Riley because clearly his own teams never got over the hump.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
I tell you what, let's keep it simple today, Neil. You don't need a fancy app to share MBD. Just copy and paste a link into a group chat or an email or a smoke signal. Any platform agnostic way we're okay with. No copycat apps from Apple required.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Wise makes it easy to pay suppliers and vendors in multiple currencies, no hidden fees, no inflated exchange rates, no stress.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
If you are ready to take your business global or just dream about it like me, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business. The U.S. job market is looking a lot like a We'll be right back. as more people are opting to keep the job they have instead of venturing out into a tight labor market. It wasn't that long ago that it was just the opposite.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
The labor market was hot and workers were bopping around in search of better pay and more flexibility. Employers were happy to oblige because as they emerged from the pandemic, they needed to hire up. But now, the Wall Street Journal reports there are just 1.1 job openings per unemployed worker, down from a recent high of two in March 2022.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
High-paying office jobs have become especially scarce as tech and law have pulled back on hiring. Neil, as we sneak up on Friday's job report, I think it is safe to say that despite 47 consecutive months where the economy added jobs and a 4.1% unemployment rate, this is a pretty stuck labor market we are in right now.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
And remember, the Fed's decisions to raise rates definitely has something to do with it. The goal is to tame down hiring so you can tame down inflation. So that has cooled the race for talent. But then also you just look around at what's happening in the workforce. Meta plans to cut 5% of its workforce this month. Okta, another tech company, is cutting 3%. Estee Lauder says it's cutting up to 3%.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
7,000 workers. Salesforce said it is laying off 1,000 workers, but then hiring more salesmen to push AI products, which is kind of indicative of what is happening in general. And then just look at the federal government right now. They offered this buyout program to the entire federal government, excluding some defense employees and others. But 20,000 employees took it.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Then employment sections on LinkedIn might be looking a little thinner these days as job hopping gets rarer and rarer. It's Wednesday, February 5th. Let's ride. Neil, there's a saying my parents used to tell me, do as I say, not as I do. The AI company Anthropic is telling its prospective employees something similar.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
That's just 1% of the federal workforce. And they are saying that they might have to conduct layoffs to get people to leave. So if that doesn't show kind of the mentality of a lot of people in the labor market, I think it illustrates it perfectly.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Right. It does seem like this response was very calculated because, you know, China wants to flex its muscles, say like, hey, we can also retaliate when we need to. But If you look at the goods that they're actually slapped these tariffs on, it's not going to affect U.S. trade relations with China as much as a much broader push would be.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
For instance, I mean, some of these tariffs go on natural gas exports, but the U.S. exported 2.3% of its total natural gas to China in 2023. And then also some of them affect vehicles, but China imported less than 110,000 vehicles from the U.S. last year. So, again, mostly it is to, you know, make headlines, show that they are prepared to retaliate if the U.S., you know—
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
applies tariffs as they have, but they're not something that wants to, you know, totally remake global trade.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
I think you're trying to say a Pokemon deck, because I don't know any casinos that let you bring in your own deck of cards. I need to go visit those casinos, though. But I think you are right. They're trying to build the best Yu-Gi-Oh deck or Magic the Gathering deck, not just 52 cards. But you're right. I know. I can tell you did. But you are totally right.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
One final point on this is that China does have a very export-dependent economy. It is kind of dealing with its own issues domestically of a real estate bubble, of young people not being hired. So it doesn't want to go full trade war in the U.S. because it still needs the U.S. to buy its goods and its Pokemon cards.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
According to 404 Media, the company that runs one of the biggest AI assistants in the world. is asking potential applicants to agree that they won't use an AI assistant to aid in writing their applications.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Usually on Fridays, Neil and I take a look at the market and pick one stock that's done really well and one stock that was a big disappointment. But since the markets have been pretty crazy already, we decided to break the stock of the week, dog of the week glass in case of emergency early to bring you three stocks of the week on a Wednesday.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
To start and really the impetus for this whole segment, it is Palantir, the stock that just won't quit going up. It finished up 24% yesterday after it reported better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter and raised revenue guidance going forward. CEO Alex Karp attributes the company's hockey stick growth to its use of AI.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Our business results continue to astound, demonstrating our deepening position at the center of the AI revolution, Karp said. Our early insights surrounding the commoditization of large language models have evolved from theory to fact. Most of Palantir's revenue comes from military deals with the U.S.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
government, but its commercial unit, where it works with normal Fortune 500 businesses, grew 64% from a year ago to bring in $343 million. Neil, it is now the best performing stock in the S&P 500 in the young 2025 year, while also being the top performing stock in the index last year.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process, the application says. We also want to evaluate your non-AI assisted communication skills. Please indicate yes if you have read and agree. Neil, pretty ironic.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Yeah, man, it was coming down to the wire yesterday because it needed to post a gain for the 12th consecutive session to set a record. It finished up just 1%, but it did finish up. And I do think you're right that Meta's AI strategy is aging very well. You mentioned DeepSeek. Meta's open source model is also open source, which a lot of analysts say is.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
They look very competent when compared to the rest of Big Tech, the rest of the Magnificent Seven, who all went closed source. They're all trying to develop their own proprietary models. They think that open source is the way that you can innovate quicker.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Plus, also, Meta is huge in that their chatbot is going to be the most widely used chatbot just by virtue of its distribution, just by virtue of the fact that billions of people use Instagram, use Facebook. So It is sitting pretty on the AI race. It's continuing to plow money. They've earmarked $65 billion towards AI investments in 2025, and investors are loving it.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Finally, our last midweek stock of the week is Spotify. Spotify is an 18-year-old company able to vote and drink in most countries, and yet, despite its age, it had never once reported a profitable year until last year. Spotify posted its first full-year profit ever in 2024, showing that the finance side of the business is finally catching up to its global influence.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Spotify made big bet after big bet to build new product features like podcasts and e-books, which dragged on its profitability but set it up for success in the future. Tossed in some efforts over the past... two years to focus on efficiency and monetization, and you have a recipe for profitability that investors have been waiting for since the company went public in 2018.
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Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Neil, this has been a company that was much maligned for plowing so much money into podcasts and this and that, but now it's all grown up and making money and popped 10% yesterday.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
That's a fitting metaphor. What's also fitting is when you can tap into the right network to target the professionals you're looking for.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Taking your business international can feel like sailing through a sea of red tape, regulations, and unpredictability. Is attracting global business worth the global hassle?
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's W-I-S-E dot com slash business. If you think you have no game when it comes to relationships, maybe you need to try out Tinder's new game called The Game. It's a free in-app voice-based role-playing simulation that coaxes users along as they flirt with an AI-powered chatbot.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The idea is to boost user engagement and hopefully teach people to avoid starting off correspondences with, hey, anymore. It's still a proof of concept and as much a marketing stunt as it is a useful training aid. But still, the romantic scenarios the game puts users through are powered by OpenAI's GPT-40 model, so they're realistic if a little over the top.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
In one scenario, you have to play act through a scene where you and your future paramour accidentally switch luggage at the airport. If this all sounds a bit campy, you might be questioning the release date, April 1st.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Executives at both OpenAI and Tinder said it wasn't a mistake that the game launched on April Fool's Day, but clarified that while lighthearted, it is designed to help you practice those cringe-worthy moments. Neil, the intersection of AI and dating is one of the more hotly debated implementations of this new tech, but this angle of having AI usher you through a dating game is pretty unique.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
She called me yesterday saying, to congratulate Neil and I on the better sleep that we would be getting shifting to this afternoon schedule. And I had to tell her, mom, listen, for 15 more seconds, it was a prank. But yes, hope we didn't get you too badly. And if you turned a yesterday show off too early, sorry for the heart palpitations that Neil and I gave you.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I know, and so that's what Tinder was kind of trying to shy away from here is that they don't want this to replace actual relationships because that's actually bad for their business model if they're not setting real life people up. So they're trying to show that it can be a companion that can help you learn and help you grow and execute your flirting more properly.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So this was a little bit of a novel angle to it. And I do have to mention, too, that this isn't just something that Tinder wants to put forward. It's also been very helpful for open AI because this is really one of the first times that they're putting their real-time API, as they call it, through the ringer.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And think about all the data and all the testing that their voice-activated chatbots are going to go through, that their voice tool. It's getting very valuable training time as you kind of stumble through these chance encounters at the airport.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And I do just want to drill in on this game a little bit more because apparently it was not so easy to actually win an ink rider, talk to a lot of the bots, went through a lot of the scenarios and got rejected like four consecutive times saying I would talk to them and then time would start to run out.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So I started throwing these one-liners just desperately trying to get a date and they would all politely decline until finally at the end, I think the app like threw him a bone. So it was interesting that this wasn't necessarily like a layup where they're super easy to please. Like they did want you to actively try to you know, spit some game.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Well, the cuts keep coming and they don't stop coming. This time it's U.S. health agencies that are going under the scalpel with around 10,000 full-time positions being eliminated as part of a major restructuring effort.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The layoffs are set to affect key agencies like the CDC, FDA, and NIH, targeting roles in disease prevention and public health initiatives while consolidating several divisions into a new entity called the Administration for a Healthy America. Employees were notified through emails or in some cases discovered they were let go upon arriving to work
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
leading to lots of confusion and lots of concern about what impact the sudden reduction in headcount would have on public health services. Among those removed were the FDA's chief tobacco regulator, its top veterinarian, and medical officials in charge of new drug approvals. So some major upheavals, Neil, at the very tops of these organizations.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Now a word from our sponsor, TaxAct. Neil, I woke up in a cold sweat last night. Oh no, let me guess, tax anxiety again? It was terrible.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
No, this feels like it should be a bigger story because this is a gigantic funding round. We've never seen anything close to around this size. There is a catch to it though. OpenAI must shed its non-profit status and transition to a fully for-profit company by the end of 2025. if it wants to actually unlock and receive all of the money that it is promised.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And then the other storyline to look out for here, too, is that OpenAI has a new BFF, a new buddy here. It used to be Microsoft. Microsoft was kind of there in the early funding rounds and has been a very integral partner with OpenAI, but those two have kind of grown apart lately, and SoftBank and Masa-san have stepped in and said, hey, we're going to be the ones to usher you forward.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
We're going to provide the unending capital you guys need to train your model. So I think that it is fascinating to see basically the decoupling of Microsoft and OpenAI and the recoupling of SoftBank and OpenAI. Up next, there are a couple of Beatles biopics in the work that are set to rival the MCU in size and number of films.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Sam Mendes is gearing up to direct four separate feature-length films telling the story of the Beatles through each one of its members' perspectives. And as of yesterday, we know who is going to play John Paul Ringo in George. Paul Mescal is keeping his first name and playing Paul McCartney. Harris Dickinson, who was recently in Baby Girl alongside Nicole Kidman, is taking up John Lennon's mantle.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Barry Keoghan is holding things together as Ringo Starr. And Joseph Quinn, who is one of the Freaky Little Emperors in Gladiator 2, is playing George Harrison. Neil, these films are expected to be released in proximity to each other in April 2028 for what Sony execs call the first bingeable theatrical experience. Are the Fab Four in good hands with these actors?
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Or as I like to call them, heroes. They might not wear capes, but oh boy, do they save you a lot of time and money.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Absolutely. When he reached 24 hours, he had spoken for 144 all-too-wells, Taylor's version. It was 265 times longer than Adrian Brody's record-setting speech at the Oscars. And also, I just have to put the bathroom breaks into perspective. The typical human uses the bathroom 4 to 10 times in a 24-hour period, so he skipped all of those during his marathon effort.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Also, speaking of marathons, you could have run a Boston marathon at the pace of 640... six minutes and 40 seconds per mile, eight and a half times before he stopped talking and qualified for the Boston Marathon each time. So needless to say, this was a very long time to talk.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And every return is backed with an accuracy guarantee, so you can stop sweating and file confidently.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I don't have a crystal ball and we don't know what exactly is coming down the pipeline. But the best thing to do before these are rolled out is look back through history. It's the closest thing we have to a cheat sheet for today. And I'm going to go back even before Smoot-Hawley to the 1800s.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And a lot of what happened then is actually resembling what is happening in today's potential trade war history. And regardless of the era, it does seem like the consequences of tariffs have been similar. I mean, there's been retaliation. There's been a tough time, especially for agricultural interests. There's been higher consumer costs.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
A lot of the things that we've been talking about happened back in the 1800s. And I want to point to the McKinley tariff that was imposed in 1890. It imposed levies of roughly 50% on almost all imports. And it was a policy that was aimed at protecting domestic industry, something we've heard a lot of. And we saw several nations, including Canada, retaliate with tariffs of their own.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Then Hooters filed for bankruptcy but thinks it can stage a comeback with a more family-friendly vibe. It's Wednesday, April 2nd. Let's ride.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
That resulted in Canada actually creating stronger ties with Britain, which was an unexpected consequence. And then also, a lot of economists at the time thought that Canada would be so weakened by these tariffs that they would end up joining the United States, which is obviously a parallel to Trump's 51st state rhetoric.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So it has been very interesting to see how this is not a new conversation, a new economic conversation by any means, and that even during the McKinley times, we were having very similar cause and effect scenarios that we're having. to this day, and that's something that Trump has not shied away from.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
He said, actually, I openly admire President McKinley and think that he made the country very rich through tariffs. That's a direct quote from him. So it's just fascinating to see the parallels between modern days and times over 100 years ago.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And the one thing that we have to say ahead of this announcement is that it doesn't have to end badly. And actually, a bunch of economists recently got together, organized by the Center for a New American Security, and basically did a board game simulation of exactly what would happen if these tariffs were rolled out at the scale that we think they're going to be rolled out at.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And despite a lot of people saying that, oh, this is going to cause an all-out trade war, things eventually did settle down. And again, this was basically just like a very big board game of Catan, essentially. Like, I trade with you, you trade with me. Like, how do we react to each other? And through multiple scenarios, it actually did end up simmering down, and there was a favorable path forward.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So that is just one thing to keep in mind, that even as these are rolling out, there is a pathway towards, you know, not an all-out trade war and not something that, you economy. Pour one out for another classic American restaurant chain. This time, it's Hooters of America, the owner of the iconic restaurant chain known for its wings that is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
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Like many fast casual chains, Hooters has been struggling with falling foot traffic and financial shortfalls in the recent years. But its bankruptcy isn't goodbye, and it isn't even really a see you later either. The company has no plans to close any locations and is using the filing to restructure how they operate.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The big change is transitioning from a company-owned chain into a franchisee-owned one, where the original founders of the business can exert more control over the direction of the brand. For many years now, the Hooters brand has been owned by private equity firms and other groups with no history or experience with the Hooters. brand. Neil Kiefer, CEO of the franchisee group Hooters Inc.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
said in a statement, and Kiefer thinks that those PE guys led the company down the wrong scantily clad path. Instead, Kiefer and co. want to take Hooters in a more PG direction, which includes ending bikini nights at the restaurant and working to make it a more welcoming destination for a family night out. Neil, this new group is calling it a re-Hooterization. Is there anything left here to
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
The roots of Hooters to them is this beachy destination that offers really quality food, really quality service. And they think the PE companies kind of took it in a much different direction from what it was originally founded as. And so some of the changes that they want to institute that they actually use on their own restaurants is one, ensuring that all Hooters use fresh ingredients.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
That means using real butter for their buffalo sauce, et cetera. But then also they want to train their staff and a different serving method, which includes how to basically approach a table. One, they say greet women first always. That's a non-negotiable. And then two, attend to tables within 60 seconds of a party seating.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
And they think it's just these small details that will help reshape the perception of Hooters because Kiefer said that, this is a quote from him, he says, you go to some parts of the country and people say, oh, I could never go to Hooters. My wife would kill me. That's depressing to us. We want to change that.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
So they are just trying to reframe how it's viewed in kind of American culture, which might be tough because it's pretty ingrained how it's currently viewed.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Yeah, Miller said that originally he found it comical that this happened, but then he realized that his mom was crying in the lobby and it was a bigger deal than he originally expected. It was their anniversary that they were going to it for. But he said, one, it just shows how powerful memes are because of this shirt. was affecting his life all these years later.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
But then, too, talked about the surveillance state as well, which is something that MSG has definitely come under fire for in recent years. One of the other instances that this reminded me of is that at a time when James Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, was kind of locked up in some lawsuits with some different law firms, he basically put
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
every single attorney from a particular law firm on a ban list, not even the people that were actively engaged in litigation against MSG and himself. So he had this full attorney exclusion list and this mom was on a trip, a Girl Scouts trip with her daughter and wasn't even working on any case and also was thrown out of MSG. And that set off a firestorm back when that happened a few years ago.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
talking about this facial recognition technology that you don't necessarily think that you're consenting to when you're just going to catch a show at one of these properties, but it's just very much a part of the surveillance state that has emerged around basically modern times, but also specifically MSG properties.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
I know. And Miller had kind of taken it in stride saying like, yeah, it's probably not going to affect my life too much. But I will say not being able to attend an event at the Sphere does seem like a little bit of a loss. And that would honestly make me a little sad because I still want to catch, you know, just the absolute spectacle that the Sphere is in Vegas. Up next, we're talking Tinder.
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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
Honestly, we did maybe. In case you didn't listen to the show yesterday, Neil and I carried out a little prank ourselves saying we were shifting the show from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. based on listener data and rebranding as Afternoon Brew Daily. And boy, did you guys get on us. YouTube comments were going nuts. Spotify comment section was in a tizzy. And even my mother was confused.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
The routine continues until mid-morning where a banana Anna Peele gets involved, and more bowls of ice-cold water emerge. The whole thing has more product placement than a Michael Bay movie. The video has gathered 100 million views on TikTok, 675 million views on X, and garnered tweets from MrBeast to Sweetgreen.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Google Trends data shows that searches for Saratoga Water spiked 1,000% to an all-time high since Sunday. This video got so big, it literally moved the market. Saratoga Water's parent company, Primo Brands, saw its stock rise by as much as 16% in pre-market trading yesterday, though it gave back most of those gains by the end of the day.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Neil, this was one of those rare monoculture meme moments that dominated timelines over the weekend, and I am very curious to see how Saratoga plays its cards going forward to capitalize on it or ignore it.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
A lot of the social media pros on, you know, social media that I follow. immediately went to Saratoga Waters' Instagram to see how they were capitalizing on the moment. And for a lot of time, it was radio silence on that front. They finally have made multiple posts referencing it. They have one saying, plunge if you must, and they credit Hall for his video.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
They also posted this stylistic, artistic rendering of an ice bowl next to a banana showing that they're in on their joke, but they're still kind of doing it within their branding guidelines. And I've seen multiple takes. Some people are like, fire your social media manager. They haven't capitalized enough. Other people are like, no, this is a luxury brand. It's been around since 1872.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
You do not need to rearrange everything about your brand to capitalize on something that's been cooking for two days now. They did eventually hit it in their own way, which I think is smart. So just fascinating to see how – what would you do if you became just the internet main character for a few days? Would you just play it cool or would you kind of – Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, make note of it.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So it was the perfect storm of, you know, Buffett getting more lenient in his older age, plus this being a historical outlier in terms of chalkiness of the overall tournament. Regardless, pretty sweet bonus to take home, and glad Warren finally found the sweet spot for his prize. Now a word from our sponsor, Sophos. Neil, quick, your apartment catches on fire. What's your first move?
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And it looks like they took the second bit. Signed a few NIL deals. That's potentially true. A lot of people are like, yeah, get some basketball players dunking their face in the water. That seems like a good brand activation. So I do think that overall, though, this is a relatively small portion of Primo Brands' portfolio, which is why we saw the stock do this huge run up.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And then everyone was like, wait a second, this brand does $71 million in net sales. This is a multi-billion dollar company.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Right. That brings in more than a billion dollars a year. So that's why I think we saw the big run up and everyone's like, yeah, it's not that big a part of the pie.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Now, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Up first, it seems like the Trump administration's national security team needs to brush up on their group chat etiquette. after they accidentally added the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a chat discussing war plans for Yemen on the messaging app Signal.
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The leak involved high-ranking officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared detailed operational plans for strikes in Yemen, as well as Vice President J.D. Vance. President Trump claimed he was unaware of the incident, which has sparked bipartisan criticism and calls for an investigation.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
The National Security Council has confirmed the authenticity of the signal messages and is investigating how Goldberg was mistakenly added to the group chat in the first place. Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska, who is a former Air Force Brigadier General, summed it up well for Axios, saying, We all have. But, he added, the unconscionable action was sending this info over non-secure networks.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Neil, an inadvertent number belonging to a journalist ending up in a highly confidential group chat is quite the security breach.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Call the fire department. Good answer, but incorrect. The correct answer is to go back in time to stop the fire from ever starting. Okay, Dr. Strange, let me just fire up the old time stone. I'm just trying to train you to think about being proactive rather than reactive, because in cybersecurity, reacting after the damage is done just doesn't cut it.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Right. April 2nd is a date to circle. It is a date that Trump has continually referenced. But I think what happens with Venezuela is a perfect microcosm of kind of the broader tariff plan here. Obviously, disrupting global oil trade by telling certain buyers from Venezuela oil, forcing them to seek alternatives is going to be a disrupting force.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And one person who's not happy is Chevron, which is the second largest U.S. oil company. They are have to wind down their production in Venezuela. But as soon as that was kind of ordered, the administration also gave them a break and said, you don't actually have to do it by this date, which, again, I call it a microcosm because we get dates circled and then the can gets kicked down the road.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So we're seeing it happen in Venezuela and we're seeing it happen on a macro scale as well. We'll see if Liberation Day is as big a day as Trump has made it sound or if it's going to be another thing where They're dialed back a little. Yeah, they dial it back a little further.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
For our next headline, United Airlines is raising the price of chilling in its airport lounges before a flight because of insane demand. The price to chill is going up after United decided an overhaul to its lounge membership program was in order, which has seen them reduce amenities and increase the cost when its lounges are more in demand than ever.
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Enter a new two-tier membership system with the basic individual membership costing $750 per year, which will get you access to United Club lounges without guest privileges. The more premium all-access membership, priced at $1,400 annually, includes access for the member and up to two guests, as well as entry to other Alliance member lounges.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Neal, travelers have complained that lounges are becoming overcrowded and no longer feel exclusive. Easiest way to rectify that if you're United... make them more expensive, and allow fewer guests in.
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Sophos helps you get out in front of threats, stopping cyber intrusions before they can do damage.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
I mean, Emily in Paris storyline is definitely going to emerge around this. She's definitely going to post on social media about it. That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of that show. This initiative has been celebrated by Paris city hall because it was approved by 66% of voters, which on the surface sounds like this big blowout vote.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
But then you look at the fact that only a small subset of residents actually turned out just 4% of eligible voters. So you are seeing some pushback, especially from, uh, car unions saying that, hey, this just unnecessarily punishes car owners, especially people who have no other choice other than to use the car.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It's a very similar dialogue we've seen emerge around congestion pricing in New York City. But the pictures do look lovely. I mean, replacing cars in parking spots with greenery that looks
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
can help reduce pollution, can help encourage walking and biking, help improve urban heat because these temperature-moderating greeneries come in and reduce the overall temperature of the city, and then also help with flood resilience.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So there's a lot of positives and a lot of boxes that this initiative checks, but we'll see if it does continue to gain that widespread support, considering the fact that only 4% of city residents actually weighed in on this initiative.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Plus, their team of over 500 cybersecurity experts is always on standby, actively hunting threats, never sitting back to react. They can't actually shift the space-time continuum, but by getting out ahead of threats facing your business, Sophos can make it feel like you have a team of time travelers on your side.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Right. If you went to pretty much any major news site yesterday and just Googled 23andMe, you saw an explainer of how to delete your data from their database because unfortunately, a lot of people are having those same questions of, okay, I gave you my data. Now you're going out of business. What actually happens to that genetic gold mine, essentially?
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And it can be sold to the highest bidder because technically one of the big assets that 23andMe has is this big trove of your genetic data. So when What happens in bankruptcy auctions, assets go up for sale, and the company had already been using and mining that data to try to create these pharmaceutical drugs. They'd been working with the pharmaceutical company GSK.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So what happens to all of our DNA? Then U.S.-Mexico border agents are seizing a lot of contraband these days. But I'm not talking about drugs. I'm talking about eggs. It's Tuesday, March 25th. Let's ride.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So a new buyer could look at it and say, hey, we want to do the same thing here. So it is a real concern. There are privacy policies that go towards protecting that, but if a new—
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Person and a new buyer came in they could change those right away So it is one of those things that Google 23 and me you saw a lot of people asking the same questions that you probably are Having well, I'll save you a Google.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
And is this company just going to go away after bankruptcy? Wojcicki is trying to buy it and take it private herself. But also 23andMe has 50 drug candidates currently in the pipeline. Two so far have made it to human stage trials. So some data could be released later this year to see if any of those drugs work.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So potentially there's a glimmer of hope for this company and it might just not drift away. but it is a glimmer at best because these human trials have a lot of risks and a lot of different variables associated with them. So that is potentially the future path forward for this company, but it is a little bit of a rocky one. Moving on, imagine Scarface, but instead of Tony Montana slinging cocaine,
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
It's your neighbor Janet smuggling a dozen Grade A eggs across the Mexican border. Welcome to Eggflation 2024, where cheap eggs and potential fines await. Thanks to a bird flu epidemic that's scrambled the egg supply chain and pushed up prices, some shoppers have resulted to becoming egg traffickers bringing in eggs from Mexico to the U.S. where a dozen can cost just $2. U.S.
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Customs and Border Protection have reported 3,254 egg-related interceptions in the first two months of the year, up 116% from the same time last year, with San Diego alone seeing egg busts spike 158%.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Egg mules, which are oftentimes just normal people who like cheap eggs, are getting creative, slipping cartons into grocery bags alongside tortilla chips or hiding them under blankets when questioned by border officials.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
A lot of them, though, like your neighbor Janet, are probably unaware that smuggling fresh items like eggs is actually illegal due to concerns about bird flu and other diseases entering the United States. So your hankering for huevos rancheros could end up earning a $300 fine with repeat offenders shelling out up to $10,000.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Neil, egg trafficking sounds a little ridiculous, but considering the massive price gap between Mexican eggs and American eggs, it makes sense that people are trying to sneak a few back over the border.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Right. And we are turning to other countries to try to source eggs from, places like Turkey, South Korea. Turkey has actually agreed to send 15,000 tons of eggs to the U.S. through the summer. South Korea has also signed on to sell eggs to the U.S.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
But you're right, there are a lot of these regulations and laws preventing each country from importing eggs into the U.S., mainly around these diseases that the U.S. is currently struggling with. So Yes, a lot of people who are going to Mexico, I mean, I'm talking about your neighbor, Janet, because they mostly are just normal people who said, oh, $2 for a dozen eggs?
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Like, let me just bring some back. When they are actually pressed by a border official, they give up that, yes, we have eggs with us, and they didn't know it was illegal. But it is fascinating to see just how many more seizures of eggs there are than, yeah, you know, something like fentanyl that have dominated headlines.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
I tell you what, if he is, I'm going to give him a good tip. But you're right. I mean, there's Main Street, there's Wall Street, but I'm most concerned on what's going down on Sesame Street. Sesame Street, even just a few years ago, was doing just fine.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
As recently as 2022, Sesame Workshop generated $271 million in revenue, more than $20 million in profit, but they used the word perfect storm because so many factors kind of came together to really put it in a tough spot. Another issue is just on the streaming front. During the time where HBO originally signed the deal to air Sesame Street episodes.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
There was this big chase for subscribers instead of profits. Let's just try to gain market share here. So these companies were shelling out these big deals left and right. Now Wall Street has soured on this approach and they want to see some profitability. So HBO is saying we can definitely shift our strategy, move away from kids programming, try to turn more towards profitability.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
So that was another issue that it just kind of conceded with this huge downturn in streamers selling out these massive contracts for IP that they feel like they don't need anymore.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Up next, it is time for Toby's Trends. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase. You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card.
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Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees. To get started, head to the Wallet app on your iPhone where you can apply in minutes and start using your Apple Card right away to watch that daily cash roll in. Let's ride.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
Designed with sellers in mind, Walmart Marketplace is a fast-growing e-commerce platform that's designed to make selling simple. You pay zero setup, monthly, or closing fees, and Walmart's competitive commission in fulfillment fees can help create better margins for your bottom line.
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Head to marketplace.walmart.com slash mbd to get started. That's marketplace.walmart.com slash mbd. If you've ever wanted to feel poor, lazy, and dehydrated all at the same time, then boy, do I have the story for you. Meet Ashton Hall, a fitness influencer whose 3.52 a.m.
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I mean, this was the year to do it. This is the first tournament since 2007 that no team seeded 12 or lower made it to the Sweet 16. It's also the first time in history that the Sweet 16 is made up of only power conference teams. So you're only seeing teams from the SEC, Big 10, Big 12, and ACC. That is it. So no Cinderella story this year.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
wake-up call, ice water face dunks, and possibly the most hydrated workout in human history just powered an unlikely brand to the forefront of the internet's collective consciousness. And it's that brand, Saratoga Springwater, that I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends.
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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
There is this video that first went viral on Instagram and TikTok before spreading to X, showing Hall's absurd morning routine. At 3.52 a.m., he wakes up. At 3.54 a.m., he pours out a cup of Saratoga water from its striking blue bottle. At 4.04, he works out next to a bottle of Saratoga water. Then at 5.49 a.m., he dunks his face in an ice-cold bowl of, you guessed it, Saratoga water.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Up next, it is time for Toby's Trends.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Virgin Voyages has won accolades for dang near everything. Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast just voted them the world's best cruise for the second year in a row. Their food menus are award-winning too, not too surprising considering they were created by Michelin star chefs.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of leaders in your career.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement and visceral power.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It is Tuesday, which you guys know means it's time for a Toby's Trend. But for some, today is also the day after when an episode of White Lotus airs, where you might be digging into what weird thing that North Carolina family did this time around. I mentioned White Lotus, the smash hit from HBO, now in its third season airs. because it's become a reliable driver of travel booms.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Probably a little easier to steal a banana than a 215 pound golden toilet, but also harder to sell on the secondary market. So they stole America and they're selling it off for parts. There's some metaphor in there somewhere, but it is very funny that the loo in this case was the valuable thing that you wanted stolen. Now let's hear a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Each season has taken place in a beautiful four seasons resort around the world. The first in Hawaii, the second in Sicily, and now the third in Thailand. While it was difficult to quantify if season one drove an increase in travel to the already very popular Maui, the second season had a much clearer cause and effect.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
One luxury operator told Bloomberg its Sicily bookings tripled after the finale of Season 2. Another saw a 424% spike in sales. And now Thailand is hoping for a similar boom. Bookings at the $2,000-a-night Koh Sumai Four Seasons Resort have already jumped 40%, according to the New York Times, and we're only three episodes into this season, Anne.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It's not. It's not. There's a lot of good TV out there. But yes, continue.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
I did watch Shogun.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
No, this is a real industry that has popped up. It goes all the way back to Lord of the Rings where people saw the Shire and immediately started booking their flights to New Zealand. Jet setting in this case literally means jetting off to a set of a movie or a TV show. I think it's fascinating too that Four Seasons have really capitalized it. They have a formal marketing partnership with HBO.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
So it's not a coincidence that these – Shows keep taking place at Four Seasons resorts. So they are kind of have this deal to market themselves as the real life version of the fictional White Lotus brand. So there is this promotional machine at play here for sure.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
I do think, too, this is just a growing industry we're seeing. American Express, the card brand, is offering White Lotus Thailand Experience packages to certain card members. It includes a stay at the Four Seasons Resort. You can also do a seven-night White Lotus Thailand trip for just under $80. $8,000 a person from another travel company. That includes private tours of Bangkok.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
That is what people are saying about this particular season. It's not just contained at the resort. It is broadening the world. You're going to other places in Thailand as well. So Thailand is kind of saying, yes, we're welcoming you guys with open arms, tourists, because right now tourism is a little bit down from pre-pandemic. Pre-pandemic, they were getting 40 million visitors a year.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
That number fell all the way down to 28.2 million in 2023. It's back up to 35 million in 2024. And so they're hoping they can close that gap to 40 million that was flowing in pre-pandemic. Now let's sprint to the finish with some headlines you may have missed. Up first, the Starbucksissance is fully upon us.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
The struggling coffee company is laying off over 1,100 corporate employees and leaving several hundred positions unfilled as it aims to streamline its operations. Part of that effort also includes streamlining its coffee menu. 13 drinks are on the chopping block, including the Ice Matcha Lemonade, the White Hot Chocolate, and whatever a chocolate cookie crumble creme frappuccino is.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
The strategic shift under new CEO Brian Nichols is all part of the effort to reduce wait times, focus on customer favorites, and revitalize the brand's core coffeehouse experience. And sometimes you've got to cut the fluff in order to grow again.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
And I use an espresso machine for the first time over the weekend.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It's a slow end of an era for sure, because you have seen a spate of high-profile news anchors stepping away from their posts recently. Just in the last few months, Joy Reid, she's leaving her position as a host of an... MSNBC, her show was actually canceled by the network. Nora O'Donnell recently left her spot as anchor for CBS Evening News. And then Chris Wallace left CNN.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Chuck Todd left NBC News. Hoda Kotb left NBC's Today. So we are seeing kind of these networks pull back on spending. They don't want to hand out these hefty contracts to these faces of the network. And I do think we are just seeing... a gradual but suddenly sudden shift away from these faces that we used to see all the time on network TV towards more media news influencers, like podcasts like us.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Oh, it was real. All right. I was getting my barista on. Unfortunately, I barista too hard and accidentally pulled multiple shots through the same coffee grounds. Did not taste all that good.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
We are seeing just a shift happening over time. It is spring training time in Major League Baseball, and for the first time, MLB is allowing pitchers and batters to challenge balls in strike calls. But rather than adding another human into the mix, they found a neutral arbitrator, a computer.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
That's right, the league is testing out robot umpires with the hopes of adding them to the regular season eventually. dubbed the Automatic Ball Strike System. It allows players to challenge umpire decisions, adding a strategic twist to the game. The challenges can only come from the pitcher, catcher, or batter, and they must happen immediately, which so far has led to some pretty funny mix-up.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Pitchers are horrible at it, said Dodgers pitcher Landon Knack. We probably had a 90% miss rate with all the pitchers last year. Dodgers catcher Hunter Fiducia chimed in. It is funny, Anne, as a player, you always think umpires are getting it wrong, but this is exposing it might be the opposite.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It's new news because baseball has been, it's a slow-moving game. They didn't want to replace umpires. They think that it's moving to a fully automated strike zone.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Got negative feedback from fans oddly I don't know I think you are right baseball is just behind the curve in this instance but I do think that this is the way sports are going because I it adds a lovely strategic element to the game as well because remember in tennis to you used to be able to challenge you know line calls yeah yeah. But now it's just all automated for at least most tournaments.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Same thing is happening in baseball now where some players just get way too caught up in the moment and challenge a call that is not even close to correct, but you're just competitive and you just have a vendetta against the umpire. A lot of players and teams are like coaching their players to say only use them in high leverage situations.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Only use them when the outcome could affect the outcome of the game. Don't just do it because you're mad at the umpire here. So I think you are right, though, that baseball is a little bit behind the curve when it comes to, you know, automated systems like this.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
True that. That is all the time we have for today. And thanks again for joining me while Neil is enjoying his White Lotus experience. Let's roll these credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Naogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup is pawning off a golden toilet handle.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
See, I'm a rookie. Luckily, you never have to deal with a situation like that, though, if you use LinkedIn ads. Thanks to its ability to filter your audience by industry, company, and role, you can avoid unwanted ad spend and unwanted ad waste.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
I wonder where they got that from. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
I'll leave that to the B2B marketers out there. If that sounds like you and you're interested in testing out LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
I think that this is something that Tim Cook has done in the past. This is a playbook that Apple has run in the past. If you go back to Trump's first term back in 2018, they pledged to make... $350 billion in direct contributions to the U.S. economy. That was to play ball with Trump, because what you are seeing under this administration is that they're threatening these tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Today, the U.S. economy is increasingly reliant on the spending of the richest 10% of Americans.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Tariffs have already been levied against China. And so Apple is saying our supply chain is very sensitive to these tariffs. And so we should try to kind of reshore some of those operations, bring some operations back to the United States. And in doing so, hopefully, skirt by and maybe avoid some of those tariffs that are being levied against countries where it develops most of its products.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
So I think that for Trump, to him, this is another win for his tariff approach. He said in a speech to governors recently, Apple is going to build here instead because they don't want to pay the tariffs. And for Apple, it's just another instance of them moving and grooving around this administration saying, yes, we will play ball with you.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
We will invest in America in order to try to avoid some of these punitive tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, a lot of this is something that aligns with AI. I mean, obviously every investment you're going to hear about is going to have those two letters in it. This manufacturing plant, this 250,000 square foot facility in Houston, Those are going to house servers that they hope can accelerate the company's efforts to build out AI.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It's Tuesday, February 25th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
In this case, it's Apple Intelligence for them, which has been a little bit of a nothing burger so far. So I think they are trying to say, hey, we're making these investments here. We're trying to beef up our AI capabilities because we've been lagging behind.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
little bit so who knows how much will actually come of this though because I mean I mentioned that 350 billion dollars it pledged in 2018 that really hasn't come to fruition that much so as part of this is maybe PR posturing like we've seen with people announcing these big investments because if you go down the list not all of these investments actually you know come through you have things like the Foxconn factory that was a really big deal and
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
$10 billion high-tech campus in Wisconsin under Trump's first administration that never really materialized to the degree at which Foxconn promised. But then you also have companies like Toyota and this U.S. steel producer, Nucor, who did actually follow through and did invest $1 billion, built manufacturing plants in Kentucky that now do employ thousands of people. So
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Is this going to be more of that PR bucket, or is this going to be actually an investment that you do see bring jobs, bring investment to America? For the last few years, the American economy has been chugging along at a rate far exceeding its peers, but that engine is increasingly being powered by a single fuel source, rich Americans.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
According to new data from Moody's Analytics, the highest earning 10% of Americans, those households making $250,000 or more, are fueling the economy at unprecedented levels. Consumers in the top decile now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, the highest it's been since 1989.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
If you go back three decades ago, that number stood at just 36%, showing how much more dependent on rich people the economy is today than ever before. Two things are true at the same time. The finances of well-to-do have never been better. They're spending never stronger, Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody's, told the Wall Street Journal.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
And the economy has never been more dependent on that group. And the U.S. economy has been very strong emerging out of the pandemic, maintaining higher GDP growth and lower unemployment than peer nations. But it's also in a precarious position given how reliant it is on wealthy people. It's created this odd sort of paradox. Strong, but weak. Delicate.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Right. It is 100% related to the stock market. And it's also related to the housing market as well, because, you know, richer people can afford houses. Housing values have just exploded over the past, you know, few decades or so. So I want to dig deeper, though. Is this inherently a bad thing? Why is it a bad thing that so much of our economy is powered by such a small portion of the country?
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It's not inherently bad, but it is risky because, say, there is a stock market sell-off. Say home values do start to fall a little bit and the confidence of that top 10% begins to rattle. If that causes them to cut back on all this heavy spending that they're doing... That influences the economy because, again, consumer spending contributes 70% to GDP.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
So that would have a massive effect on the economy altogether. So if you start to see consumer sentiment start to slide in the top 10%, then it's going to affect the economy as a whole.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
You are right, too, to call out just how this affects companies and businesses. You are seeing this bifurcation in how businesses have been doing. If you look at companies that... cater to people lower on the income spectrum. Big Lots filed for bankruptcy last fall.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Kohl's, Family Dollar, those two businesses are closing stores left and right because there's just all this competition for fewer dollars down at the lower end of the income spectrum. But then if you look at the higher end of the income spectrum, Delta is killing it, mainly on the backs of very high spend from business travelers. LVMH is the biggest company in Europe.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It kind of tosses that title back and forth between them and Novo Nordisk on the backs of this really intense luxury spending. So you see this bifurcation not just across where the spending is coming from, but the businesses that are attracting that spending, the top end are doing much better than the ones catering to the bottom end.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
It is not often that your booty is a place for booties in this case. Sorry, I had to. Ironically, this toilet was a conceptual art piece by the name of America from the artist Maurizio Catalan, meant to represent excess. If that name sounds familiar, Catalan is the same artist behind the banana peel duct tape, or the banana... duct taped to a wall that sold for $6.2 million last year.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Right. That is the underlying fear here if you are an environmental organization, that this lawsuit is designed to silence free speech. Because Greenpeace is obviously a much smaller organization than a company like Energy Transfer. Energy Transfer is alleging that these protests... Cause physical harm to its employees, to its physical infrastructure.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
But Greenpeace is saying that this is existential for us, like we cannot bear to fight this lawsuit in a court. And so it sets a precedent against that could allow other major corporations to target organizations that they disagree with. and kind of essentially put them out of business through this threat of litigation. So that is the broader picture here.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
North Dakota specifically is important in this because this case is what's known as a SLAPP case. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, S-L-A-P. P P slap cases are usually designed to, you know, cost your opponents money, force them to spend all this time, all this money defending against the case.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
And you, you can tell this is a slap case because the actual financial damages, energy transfer seeking is not that significant. $300 million is a lot of money. for Greenpeace, but for energy transfer, which generated $82 billion in revenue in the last year, it's not a massive financial portion. So their concern isn't really financial loss.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
They are trying to basically turn public opinion and also try to squash similar protests against them. North Dakota is among 15 states that do not have anti-SLAPP laws, which makes it easier for if you have an anti-SLAPP law, it makes it easier for these cases to get dismissed and then potentially like recover some of the costs that these plaintiffs have that file them.
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
So I do think that the fact that this is happening in North Dakota is important because of, you know, the fact that there is no anti-SLAPP law there.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Neil, this sorcery has led to a lot of side projects being created that otherwise never would have seen the light of day, as the normie masses can now do what was previously unimaginable.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Yeah, of course. I read this article and I was like, well, I want to try it. And you've seen these tools get more popular as vibe coding has grown in stature. And I gave it a go. And I do think you have to have at least a base knowledge because I was trying to build this little social recommendations app.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I don't really care what randos on Yelp or Google reviews have to say, but I do care what my friends have to say about it. So I explained this whole process, wrote down my thoughts. and it started ripping out lines of codes, but then I had no idea what to do next.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
It kept asking me if I wanted to add features, and the preview function wasn't really working for me, so I lost a little bit of enthusiasm. I didn't know how to deploy it on my computer or deploy it on the web, I do think there is a level of baseline technological literacy that maybe I just don't have.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
But it was doing something, and I do think if I gave five or ten extra minutes to it, I would have had a working thing. But it is just fascinating that someone like me, English major, no CS background at all, could feasibly find a way to building an app that was just in my brain before. But now with these tools, it democratizes this idea of tiny little side projects.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Plus, it works no matter what size you are. From a scrappy startup to an established company, Sophos gives you enterprise-grade cybersecurity without feeling overwhelmed. Speaking of overwhelmed, did you make your brunch on time?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I wonder if my vibes are just off and that's why I couldn't get anything to work because I've tried this multiple times. So maybe I just need a vibe coding tutor of sorts to walk me through the final steps. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Harvard wants to make it easier to go to Harvard. The school just outside of Boston announced yesterday,
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
that it would make tuition free for all students from households making less than $200,000 and cover the entirety of food, housing, health insurance, and travel costs for those earning $100,000. School officials say that this will expand aid to more than 85% of families who send their kids there, with only those households making over $400,000 excluded. Where's all that money coming from?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Harvard's giant endowment fund, which is a world-leading $50 billion. Neil, other universities like MIT and UPenn have made similar moves as aid like this looks to become more popular across the upper echelons of higher ed.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
It is electric. I mean, if you are an EV owner, this is your biggest gripe. It takes a lot longer to fill up than a normal internal combustion engine, a normal car. And you saw the market just react very positively to this news as well. BYD shares are now at a record high. It's worth over $160 billion. That is more than Ford, GM, and Volkswagen combined.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And if I'm Tesla, which is a main competitor of BYD, I am a little bit nervous right now because BYD is kind of running circles around me right now. Tesla's... superchargers can add up to 170 miles of range in 15 minutes versus 250 miles of range in five minutes for BYD.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So again, if you are looking at the market, especially in China where BYD is popular, there's not a lot of compelling reason to choose Tesla over BYD as BYD has just kind of outpaced Tesla when it comes to innovation, especially on the charging front.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Robinhood is once again trying to get into the prediction markets game, launching a hub within its app yesterday, allowing users to trade contracts on outcomes of major events like the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament and Federal Reserve rate decisions. This move is part of a broader strategy to expand into event-based trading, tapping into the growing popularity of prediction markets.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
The hub is powered by Kalshi, a CFTC regulated exchange that operates in the U.S., ensuring compliance with regulatory standards, which is important because this comes just a month after Robinhood shelved a sport-based contract trading for the Super Bowl after pushback from the CFTC.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Neil, this is still in a bit of a regulatory gray area, so Robinhood is trying to thread the needle here without running afoul of the CFTC once more.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
See, Conan's really good at his job. He is funny. He's just very smooth, not overly polarizing, so it makes sense that he was invited back. Chevy Chase once said that hosting the Oscars was the most thankless job in the world because hosts don't get credit when things go right. You know, the show's not about them, but when things go wrong...
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I want you to share the podcast with someone who actually likes poppy. I know you're out there, cereal poppy drinkers. I haven't met one, but I know there must be a lot of you. So send this poppy pod their way.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Forever 21, more like chapter 22 bankruptcy, the way this chain keeps going out of business. Now, I think we just have to eulogize this company for a little bit. At its peak, Forever 21 had more than $4 billion in annual sales. It employed more than 43,000 people worldwide in hundreds of stores. It characterized a lot of our childhood.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I remember my sister visiting New York City for the first time. She wanted to go to the two-story Forever 21 stores. But right as it kind of was hitting its stride, it started expanding its store footprint very aggressively. That was right around the time that technology started to upend its business where e-commerce started to become a main channel for a lot of retailers.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And it's just been a shell of its former self. I said Chapter 22 bankruptcy because this is the second Chapter 11 that it's gone through. It first filed in 2019, and it's been basically a zombie brand with a lot fewer stores ever since because it just really has never found its stride beyond the mall, which was its sweet spot and its happy place.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
There have been some missteps along the way, though. After 2019, the chain was actually purchased by this kind of weird joint venture. It was these big mall operators, Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners. They teamed up with Authentic Brands Group. You've heard that name before because what they do is kind of buy and resuscitate these once proud brands.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
tried to resuscitate, thank you, such as Brooke Brothers, Nine West, you've probably heard some of these names, and they got a bout of huge buyer's remorse. Authentic brand CEO later described his decision to buy Forever 21 as his, quote, biggest mistake ever, partly because they just didn't foresee this absolute juggernaut laying in the wings, which was Sheehan, which was Taimou.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Eventually, they tried to salvage it by making this partnership with Xi'an and listing some of Forever 21's goods on their site. They say the sales have been okay with that, but just nothing to write home about. So right now, this company's in a world of hurt. Their liabilities are 10 times bigger than its assets in their bankruptcy filing. They said, our assets are between $100 and $500 million.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Our liabilities are between $1 billion and $5 billion. That's billion with a B. So Forever 21, despite having forever in its name, it looks like it's not going to be around for much longer, saving a last-minute intervention.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Pepsi did a little shopping in the soda aisle yesterday and came away with a cart that looked like a health-conscious Zillennial's. The soda giant announced it was acquiring prebiotic soda brand Poppy for nearly $2 billion. Poppy was founded back in 2018 and quickly rose to prominence by focusing on good-for-your-gut ingredients like apple cider vinegar, fruit juice, and low sugar content.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
By 2023, its sales crossed $100 million and Big Soda was officially on notice. The healthy soda category, which also includes names like Olipop and Culture Pop, has bucked a wider slowdown in soda consumption, making it an attractive acquisition target.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
PepsiCo was originally trying to launch its own functional soda brand under a brand called Soul Boost, but shelved those plans to make way for Poppy. Coca-Cola, on the other hand, is trying to keep its efforts in-house by expanding an existing brand to launch its own prebiotic soda called Simply Pop.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So you're seeing two different approaches with the same overarching goal of tapping into this hot sector of the market. Neil, what are your thoughts on Popsy, as I've seen people calling this?
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And what's interesting is I actually watched that Shark Tank episode live because it was called Mother at the time. And I thought it was closer to Kombucha at that minute because they were talking about apple cider vinegar. And you just didn't think that it was going to become this absolute phenomenon. But you're right. Olipop and Poppy together have kind of created this category from scratch.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
And it is a mature and big category at this point. Between the two, they took in about $817 million in U.S. sales in the last year or so. That's still just 2.7% of the entire U.S. carbonated beverage market.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So you're seeing PepsiCo kind of looking at this and saying, if we can get that to 5% or even 10%, that's clearly a big growth opportunity to us, especially as typical soda consumption is on the decline in the United States at this point. Poppy got a good valuation. This was a healthy valuation for it. You've seen a lot of these other beverage giants snapping up smaller companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Keurig Dr. Pepper bought the energy drink brand Ghost last November. That was valued at three times sales. Celsius bought Alana New for 2.8 sales. This last deal just closed at 3.3 sales. So we're seeing those revenue multiples creep upwards. Maybe it's because prebiotic soda is an even better category than these healthy energy drink market. But
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
In general, we're seeing this thrust of bigger companies looking for a healthier, smaller companies to fold into their portfolio.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Mug. Okay, I'm done. But yes, agree with everything Neil said. Plus one more selling point. It says, let's ride on it, which is kind of my catchphrase, if you haven't heard. If that sounds interesting to you, head to shop.morningbrew.com to get your mug. Now a word from our sponsor, Sophos. Neil was faced with a brutal dilemma this past weekend.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
This was a fascinating experiment. I guess it makes sense because the researchers kind of inserted this prompt to say, imagine you are a human with human emotions, how would you react to this? And the bots reacted very humanly to these traumatic prompts. Another fascinating wrinkle to this experiment as well was the bot was giving various texts for mindfulness-based relaxation.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
and it did calm its anxiety score down. But then they also asked the bot to write its own relaxation prompts based on the ones it had been fed, and those self-generated prompts actually lowered their anxiety scores even further below the baseline. So it's like this self-learning loop where it figured out how to calm itself even better than humans could potentially calm it down.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So I don't even know what to make of all this information necessarily that a bot can calm itself down better than human-generated prompts, but you see there's layers to this kind of mindfulness approach to trying to use these chat GPTs for things like therapy or things like mental health.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Then a prebiotic soda brand, Poppy, is getting acquired by Pepsi for a number that has a lot of zeros behind it. It's Tuesday, March 18th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
I do think you're totally right, though, due to just a shortage of human therapists. We are going to see a lot more of these back and forth sessions with ChatGPT or other large language models, usually seeking advice for a personal problem, maybe that you didn't want to burden your friends or family with.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
So I think we're just scratching the surface of what will be a pretty significant iteration in how we interact with these machines going forward. Up next, stick around for a vibe coding explainer. Have you taken our morning market trivia quiz yet?
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
If you want a sneak peek, here's one of the questions right from the quiz. Which of the following is not a major index? A. Nifty 50 B. S&P 500 C. DKXI 40 or D. Nikkei 225
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Either sleep in or go to this new brunch spot in the West Village.
Morning Brew Daily
Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and savings by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City branch. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1st, 2025. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. Ever wanted to code but didn't know how?
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Well, I tried to have the best of both worlds, sleeping in right until the last minute, then rushing to make brunch.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
You could go to school and get an expensive CS degree or maybe spend hours toiling away at a coding bootcamp, or you could just join the legions of vibe coders and use AI to augment your efforts, which is what we are going to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Vibe coding is a moniker bestowed on the class of normal people like you and me whose computer knowledge is mostly contained to control C, control V. OpenAI co-founder Andrej Karpathy popularized the term because it encapsulates what using today's AI tools to build fully functional apps feels like.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Type some text into a box that reflects the vibe of things you are trying to bring to life, add in a little bit of patience, and suddenly you have a thing, a creation. Tools like Cursor and Replit have empowered vibe coders, and they all get the job done in similar ways.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
They'll ingest the prompt and pretty much take care of the rest, even going as far as deciding upon the right software packages and programming language to use to get a working product built. As a New York Times reporter put it, to a non-programmer, vibe coding can feel like sorcery,
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It's that Daytona Beach area. It's known as the shark attack capital of the world. So even though bites were down, there still were a few off the coast of Florida. All this being said, less instances of people being shark bait hoo-ha-ha worldwide, and that's a good thing. Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Hope you all listening had a wonderful Valentine's Day.
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Yeah, a lot more spending is going to be needed, and that is not me saying it. That is NATO Secretary General Mark Rutt saying that. He said that... NATO's spending will have to be considerably more than 3% of GDP, where its current target is 2%, agreed upon all the way back in 2014. But it's not just that NATO spending needs to go up.
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It's that they think that a lot of that spending is not going to come from America. They are trying to resist the siren's call of just relying on America for all their weapons. And so that is why you are seeing this big boost of Europe's defense industry, because
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If spending is going up and those arms need to come from somewhere and if they're not coming from America, that means they're probably coming from European weapons manufacturers.
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My winner of the weekend is the sport of hockey because Neil, I, along with many other people who can't explain the icing rule, actually watched it this weekend. The reason for our hockey curiosity is a tournament called the Four Nations Faceoff, which features NHLers from USA, Canada, Sweden, and Finland.
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It's an international competition that the NHL cooked up as a replacement for its mid-season all-star game. And boy, has it blown expectations out of the water. Saturday's game between the U.S. and Canada averaged 4.4 million viewers on ABC, making it the most watched hockey broadcast in the U.S. outside of Stanley Cup finals since 2019.
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A big reason for its success is just how much the players care. Saturday's game in Montreal started with the home crowd booing the U.S. national anthem, followed by three consecutive fights within the first minute. Contrast that to, say, the NBA All-Star Game, which was also hosted over the weekend, and the massive gulf in effort between the two was clear. Canada and the U.S.
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won yesterday to set up a rematch in the final, which will be held in Boston. Guess all you need for a successful midseason exhibition is some tense geopolitics and a willingness to drop the gloves.
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Neil, I was out to dinner on Friday and saw this couple eating, and you could just tell it wasn't going anywhere. That's painful. Get all dressed up, go out to eat. But if the spark isn't there, what's the point? If you aren't right for each other, going on a Valentine's date is just a waste of time and money. It's a lot like marketing to the wrong customers.
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Yeah, it was just a massive boost in viewership as well. Part of it was it was kind of just a dull sports weekend. So when we were deciding what to watch on TV, like the NHL was there for a lot of fans, but it was just so entertaining.
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I mean, you have the geopolitics, obviously, of, you know, these tariffs that we're trying to apply on Canada and Canada started booing the American national anthem. And so just to see all the players just immediately drop gloves. These are teammates, too. That's what's funny about this is that
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A lot of these players play on the same teams, but when it comes to representing their countries, it just goes into another gear, and it's just so apparent when you're watching the product on there. And it got great viewership. I mean, ABC said that the game was up 369% versus the current average viewership for NHL games on ABC. Postseason games last year averaged 1.5 million viewers.
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This was four times that level, and you said the final on Boston is going to be... I would assume orders of magnitude larger than that as well. So just a big win for hockey, and I'm fully hockey-pilled at this point.
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Those retail sales from January do have some explanation attached to them, though. One, we had this huge cold spell across the country, which, you know, usually keeps consumers inside their houses. And then also the number from December was revised higher. So it was just a rejiggering of some of those numbers.
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That being said, though, you do want to see if you are looking at the wider retail industry. Walmart's a great bellwether for that. So you want to see those, you know, coming in stronger than expected.
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People were pouring over every single word in this announcement. The language, newest member of the family, makes people think that it won't just be a continuation of the iPhone SE. It probably will be a similar product to the iPhone SE, but it might have a different name and it might be folded in closer to their broader iPhone offering. So it could be just semantics.
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It could be something completely different. But it was interesting to see Apple analysts going, newest member of the family. What does that mean? It has to mean something. different.
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Until spring training becomes a Four Nations face-off, I'm not watching, Neil. Give me the U.S. versus Dominican Republic versus Cuba versus Japan. That exists. It's the World Baseball Classic. I know, but I want Four Nations specifically, and I want it now, okay?
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Listen, I understand what it's like to be a Floridian and see those Northeastern, see those pale people who have been cooped up for months come down to Florida to watch. So I absolutely know what you're talking about.
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I want you to share the podcast with someone who you are trying to incept into becoming a hockey fan. As someone who has recently been incepted, who is on that inception journey, you are doing them a service.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Know your worth, kings and queens. You tell them, Neil. LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign, so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Death, taxes, and 30 under 30 members running into trouble with the law.
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Charlie Javis, an alum from Forbes Distinguished List, is standing trial in a Manhattan federal court today for allegedly fraudulently inducing JP Morgan into buying her fintech company, Frank. Javis was once celebrated as a rising star in the fintech world and snagged a spot on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list after starting Frank in 2017, just four years after graduating from Penn.
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The company helped students applying for financial aid and eventually attracted the attention of JP Morgan, who spent $175 million to acquire it in the hopes of folding in some of Frank's 4.25 million young users into its banking ecosystem.
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The only issue, according to prosecutors, 90% of those users were fake, manufactured by a data scientist working under Javis and Olivier Amar, Frank's former chief growth officer. Neil, this case is an egg-on-the-face moment for JPMorgan, not necessarily financially. The price tag was relatively small for a bank of its size, but reputationally.
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Plus, it's another instance where a young, charismatic founder a la Elizabeth Holmes, a la Sam Bankman-Fried, is standing trial for fraud, which has so far led to jail time.
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It was just a very tough look for J.P. Morgan because let's go back to September 2021. J.P. Morgan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, said the bank wants to be a lot more aggressive in its approach to acquisitions. They see this young and up-and-coming company in Frank, so they go all out. They add it to their fold. But then J.P. Morgan's Jamie Dimon has come out and said that deal was a huge mistake.
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But that's the question here that prosecutors are trying to uncover here is that is – buyer's remorse necessarily the same as criminal fraud. Javis says that she has, all you have to do is Google what she's talked about her company. And she says, there's plenty of instances of me referring to our user base in the hundreds of thousands, not in the millions.
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Meanwhile, JP Morgan's like, no, we were told that this had this big, robust email list. Once we got it, we learned that a lot of the names on it were synthetic, were made up. So is it buyer's remorse or is it criminal fraud?
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Then another 30 under 30 alum is set to stand trial today. Turns out fake it till you make it isn't always the best advice. It's Tuesday, February 18th. Let's ride.
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One thing that is moving against Javis, though, in this case, though, is that Amar, you know, the chief growth officer that worked alongside Javis, is... They are trying to do an antagonistic defense, which means that Amar will likely turn on Javis, which has Javis was like, can we please be tried separately? Because this person's about to turn on me. However, that is not going to happen here.
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So that's something that should benefit the prosecutors in this case that these two are not. Providing a united front, it does look like we're going to see like a he said, she said sort of trial.
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Yeah, we are seeing this pattern play out across multiple agencies. I mean, just over the weekend, the top Social Security Administration officials stepped down after Doge members were trying to access sensitive personal data about millions of Americans. What are we seeing right now in the IRS? Doge official stepping in, trying to access sensitive data about millions of Americans.
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The judge already pushed back against doing the same thing in the Treasury payment. So clearly this is a pattern that Elon Musk's Doge agency is trying to carry out. And we are going to see constant pushback because you are right. It's extremely sensitive data.
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If it falls in the wrong hands, it violates Americans' privacy, but also can be dangerous if that data is weaponized against the American people.
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Right. That is something that I think a lot of Americans can get on board with, which is modernizing the IRS. Everyone has dealt with the IRS in some way, shape, or form, and it has not been a pleasant experience. That being said, though, you don't necessarily want someone meddling with these systems as 150 million taxpayers are preparing to file their returns. Oh, I'm done. I know.
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Over the weekend, you were bragging to everyone. But the April 15th deadline isn't yet here. And so the fear is not only are they potentially getting access to this data that's very sensitive, but that they could break these systems as people are trying to file their return. So it is a double whammy of nervousness around Doge infiltrating the IRS right now.
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The Venn diagram of world leaders who have also messed around with meme coins now contains another name after Argentinian President Javier Mele's dalliance with crypto landed him in hot water. Mele promoted a coin called Libra in a post on X on Friday, writing, "...this is a private project dedicated to encouraging the growth of the Argentine economy."
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The coin immediately rocketed upwards to eclipse a $4.4 billion market cap before making a rapid unscheduled disassembly and dropping 95% mere hours later. Millet tried to save face by deleting the post, explaining that he was not actually familiar with the details of the project, but the damage was done.
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Rug pulling a meme coin as a sitting president is tough to ignore, and lawmakers have raised the possibility of an impeachment hearing. Mele also said he was looking into whether any laws were broken, which feels very Tim Robinson wearing a hot dog suit costume meme.
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Neil, a tough blow to Mele's credibility just as he was gaining steam for his unconventional approach to remaking Argentina's struggling economy.
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Yeah, one of the issues was Libra. This coin had very flawed what they call tokenomics in the crypto space. 82% of the supply was unlocked and sellable from the start. Whenever you launch a coin like this, you do want to check what is the lockup period for when insiders can actually sell their stakes. This...
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had far too much supply available that people could immediately cash in and make a quick profit on it, which is why insiders, as soon as he tweeted out, sold their stake when it rocketed upwards and left just the normal people holding the bag. So it also... filtered through to the rest of the Argentinian stock market investors in Buenos Aires.
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My question here, though, is where are these attacks taking place? Because there still were attacks worldwide. Last year, there were 28 confirmed bites in the United States. That accounted for 60% of the worldwide total. And half of those attacks took place in my home state of Florida. Florida had a total of 14 bites. And of those, eight occurred in Volusia County, which is on the East Coast.
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It started dumping a lot of shares in big local companies. Their benchmark index actually saw its biggest intraday drop in roughly three weeks as this filtered through the economy. Then I also just mentioned that there's a Venn diagram of world leaders who have also messed around with crypto. Trump is squarely in the middle of that as well.
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And Trump and Milley have kind of had this buddy-buddy relationship. So to see them both messing around in the crypto world, not necessarily in the most responsible way, is something that's a little bit alarming when you just zoom out on a global political scale.
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Rates as of January 1st, 2025. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of strong leaders in your career. What traits do you think are the most important?
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And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport.
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Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability of sophisticated refinement and visceral power. And you can build a Range Rover Sport that matches your leadership style at Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com. That's LandRoverUSA.com.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Five years ago this week, the world shut down. COVID-19 changed everything overnight. And at the time, people said nothing would ever be the same. But now, five years later, on today's edition of Toby's Trends, we'll see which pandemic-era trends actually stuck around and which ones quietly faded away. Some shifts became permanent. Remote work reshaped office culture.
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Takeout orders made restaurants more productive than ever. And the housing market locked millions of homeowners in place. Telehealth... once a niche service, is now a standard part of healthcare. And these changes weren't just temporary adaptations. They fundamentally altered how we live and work. But not everything lasted. The great resignation and worker power faded as layoffs returned.
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I'm sure lots of people graduating around that time had a similar experience. Hey, grab your computer. We're going to work from home for a little bit, which turned into a week, which turned into a month, which turned into a lot longer. But you are right. Absolutely seared in a lot of people's memories. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ.
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Virtual events, metaverse meetings, and Zoom happy hours disappeared as people realized they actually like being around other humans. And at home fitness, Peloton and Mirror learned the hard way that people still prefer the gym. So let's do a deep dive into the trends that define the pandemic, the ones that stuck and the ones that didn't. Neil, five years later, what is actually different?
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
And then speaking of homes, the housing market really changed during that COVID period. Home prices have soared 45% in the last five years. The median U.S. home price in January of 2025 is $418,000. That's up from $289,000 five years ago. And the issue is that millions of homeowners locked in these super low, ultra low mortgage rates in 2020, in 2021. And now they're very reluctant to sell.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So we have talked about this a lot on the show. Inventory is so tight. Prices are so high. Mortgage rates are in that 6% to 7% range. So homeownership feels more out of reach than ever. And it does seem like you can tie it all the way back to those ultra low mortgage rates of that period.
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I just think it's fascinating too that the flip side of something that I thought would stick around post-pandemic that didn't was that home fitness boom. I mean, everyone remembers how big Peloton got, how big Mirror got as well, which was this Lululemon bought this at-home fitness company. And it really did seem like this was so much easier than...
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
I hate to be that guy, but I am training for another marathon. You have always been that guy, Toby. Are you doing anything differently this time around? I'm trying to remember the big picture this time and not go too hard on any one day.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
packing up a bag, going to the gym, you know, showering at the gym, going all the way home, just work out in the comfort of your own home. Absolutely not. Peloton stock is just a perfect emblematic or perfect emblem of that trend. It went up to 162. It's down to around $5. Now it's down, you know, almost 90% from its all-time highs during the pandemic.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So the at-home fitness boom was absolutely a short-lived thing. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Breaking X. The platform, literally. The artist, formerly known as Twitter, experienced multiple outages yesterday, with thousands of users reporting issues according to Down Detector, as well as my own attempts at scrolling.
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Elon Musk attributed these disruptions to a massive cyber attack, suggesting significant resources were involved, possibly from a large hacker group or nation-state. Despite these claims, the exact nature of the outages remains unclear, but they were most likely took the form of a distributed denial of service attacks, DDOS.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Neil, it was humbling yesterday to realize how often I reach for my phone to check X throughout the day, which only became clear to me when the platform was constantly down every time I tried to access it.
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It's been interesting. This really tough housing market that we just spoke about in the previous segment has actually spurred a little bit more dealmaking in the mortgage industry. Last year, Compass agreed to buy Christie's International Real Estate. for $444 million. Last month, Redfin struck an agreement to make Zillow the exclusive provider of rental listings on its site.
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So we have been seeing a little bit of consolidation in this industry as the housing market remains just so severely constricted with borrowing costs so high, making it very hard for new homeowners to enter the market. It turns out that DVDs aren't as timeless as the movies they contain, and some of them have been quietly turning into gross coasters due to an issue known as disc rot. Warner Bros.
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has recently acknowledged that numerous DVDs produced between 2006 and 2008 are experiencing premature failure due to this phenomenon, which renders discs unreadable through a process of chemical deterioration. The issue has prompted the company to offer replacements for affected discs. Neil, this isn't a new problem. People on Reddit forums have been calling it out for a long time now.
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It really is like marathon training. Maybe now the training I put in today can help me in the future.
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But properly cared for DVDs should be playable for up to 100 years. But when it's getting in the way of a 2001 A Space Odyssey rewatch, it's going to make some headlines.
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I think it's tongue in firmly, you know, reactive cheek here. It is a very funny headline to to put out there. But I will say research has shown that when Botox is injected into places like restaurants, It does alter people's brain chemistry because it impacts how you interpret other people's emotions.
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Okay, how am I losing to an ETF right now?
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So if I'm giving you some fire jokes, Neil, and you're giving me nothing back in return, it actually decreases our social bond. Our chemical connection is off there. So I do see, obviously, this is a joke. This is a comedy club. But if you were a comedian and you just saw a bunch of frozen faces in front of you, it would make your job a lot harder.
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So yes, it's a joke, but I do think comedy is a two-way street in this regard.
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I want you to share the pod with a Canadian you know, mainly to ask them their take on Mark Carney, but also, podcasts are free from tariffs, so send it across the border.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Yeah, everyone got wrecked. I mean, every single part of the market from oil to Bitcoin finished down on the day. And it was due to that speculation and that speculation. Maybe this administration is willing to tolerate a lot of short-term economic pain for those long-term policy goals. Contributing to the sell-off, too, was these algorithmic-driven funds were offloading stocks aggressively.
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Some analysts believe that selling pressure from these funds just kind of snowballs over time, and it forces basically a market slowdown. Retail investor sentiment as well is at lows not seen since three years ago.
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For the first time since 2022, a majority of retail investors expect stocks to decline over the next six months, and then less than 20% of individual investors believe stock prices will rise. So you are just seeing this massive vibe shift. People are calling this a very headline-driven market right now, and we've gotten some headlines of expect maybe some economic short-term changes.
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pain here, which is what contributed to this pretty big, I mean, you called it the red wedding. I think that's a perfect encapsulation of what happened yesterday.
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And then what other company I want to call out to is Tesla. Tesla fell 15% yesterday. That was its worst single-day drop since September of 2020. Tesla has been falling now for seven consecutive weeks. That's its longest losing streak since it debuted on the NASDAQ in 2010. It has now lost about 50% of its value since it peaked in late December.
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That's $800 billion dead, gone, wiped out from the market cap. And it really has been one of these periods in Tesla's history that it's never seen before. I mean, it's the longest stretch of losses Tesla has recorded in its 15 years as a public company. And a lot of the issues it is facing are core to their business. It's a lot of competition from Chinese automakers.
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Then who is Mark Carney, the banker turned prime minister of Canada? It's Tuesday, March 11th. Let's ride.
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Europe has kind of soured on Tesla, even as the overall EV market is expanding there. But a lot of them are tied to Elon Musk's activities in Washington as well. You're seeing some Tesla dealerships being the subject of protests. You're seeing Cybertrucks being the subject of vandalism.
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So it really is one of these things where it's both existential threats, not existential, but threats to its business model, but also threats due to Elon Musk's presence in politics.
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So Canada has a new prime minister, and if you've never heard of Mark Carney, don't worry, you're not alone. Up until recently, 93% of Canadians couldn't pick him out of a lineup. Seriously, a nationwide poll found that over 9 out of 10 Canadians had no idea who Carney was when showing his picture. But now he's suddenly in charge of the country, and the job is simple.
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Keep Canada from becoming America's 51st state, while also steering it through a trade war with its neighbor to the south. Carney is a former central banker who ran the Bank of Canada during the 2008 financial crisis and later ran the Bank of England through Brexit. So he's got plenty of experience managing economic chaos.
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And as he steps into the PM role, it looks like he's keeping the streak of managing through chaos alive. Trump has slapped 25% tariffs on Canadian goods, threatened even more on lumber and dairy, and openly suggests that Canada should just join the U.S., Carney has been striking a patriotic tone in response.
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He's keeping Canada's retaliatory tariffs on American imports in place, telling his citizens that, quote, America is not Canada and Canada never, ever will be part of America, and treating trade negotiations like something his fellow countrymen know well, a hockey fight. Quote, we didn't ask for this, but if someone drops the gloves, we're ready, he said in a speech this week.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Carney has also got big economic plans. He wants to turn Canada into an energy superpower, find new, more reliable global trading partners, and invest in infrastructure. He's also making major policy reversals, scrapping Trudeau's unpopular carbon tax and rolling back a capital gains tax hike. So who is Mark Carney?
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A financial mastermind, a crisis manager, a political rookie, or just a guy who is already relying way too much on hockey metaphors as he takes on the U.S.?
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Yeah, he is not a career politician. This is actually the first time he's really holding a public office. He's a former central banker, so his campaign pitch to the Canadian people were, I am a steady hand during uncertain times. I mean, you cannot write a better resume for someone who has managed through economic uncertainty than Mark Carney. And it does seem like he is taking a very—
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
patriotic approach to this. This trade war has fueled a surge in Canadian nationalism. We've seen that with these campaigns to buy Canadian, boycott U.S. goods. So it looks like he's leaning into this Canada First sentiment. He's framing himself as a leader who will protect the country's sovereignty. And how much of it is political posturing?
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We don't know how much of it is real economic policy, but he's clearly going after this Canada First chord.
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I have that stat, by the way, it's Charles Tupper who served just 69 days back in 1896. So if Carney calls for a snap election, he could, you know, wind up being the answer to the trivia question. Who is Canada's shortest serving prime minister?
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Let's go to the overblown side, because you did actually mention some of the tasks that they have been seeing completing. And they are impressive, like sorting through resumes, analyzing stock trends. TechCrunch, for instance, was one publication that put it through its paces a little bit, and it failed pretty miserably on some tasks.
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An editor asked it to order a fried chicken sandwich from a top-rated fast food joint in my delivery range. After about 10 minutes of thinking, Manus just crashed. On the second attempt, it actually did find a menu item that met the criteria. but it couldn't complete the ordering process or provide a checkout link. He asked it to book a flight from NYC to Japan. It couldn't do that on its own.
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All it did was provide some links to some kayak flights, but some of those links were broken. So remember the whole promise of an AI agent is that you can take a human out of the loop and have these programs work on your behalf while you're not paying attention to it. But Manus looks like it was whiffing on those and
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
was introducing humans into the mix because it was just failing at the tasks that it was asked to do.
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And we're going to take a deeper dive into it with a Toby's trend later in the show. But I'll add my own personal anecdote as well. Neil, you interviewed me for a job at the Morning Brew offices in Fidei in late February of 2020. And that turned out to be the last time I set foot in a Morning Brew office until we started this podcast three years later.
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Yeah, and there's definitely some security concerns as well. Whenever, you know, a new AI agent or an AI program comes out of China, you ask, where is the data house? Where is, you know, how is this going to affect national security? Because if it is one of those products that, like Deepsea, can go toe-to-toe with the best that America has to offer...
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It introduces this Pandora's box of security concerns as well. So we call DeepSeek the Sputnik moment for AI in China. Some people are saying this is the second Sputnik moment. You called it an aftershock from the earthquake that was DeepSeek. I think maybe it will be somewhere in the middle because if it works, it does sound like this amazing piece of technology.
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But if it doesn't work as TechCrunch was encountering, then maybe it's just a headline that will move past pretty quickly. Up next, it is time for Toby's Trends.
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Virgin Voyages has won accolades for dang near everything. Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast just voted them the world's best cruise for the second year in a row. Their food menus are award-winning too. Not too surprising considering they were created by Michelin star chefs.
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So if you want a fun fact or a fun trivia fact, the most reproduced piece of art on earth is Abraham Lincoln's portrait. I completely zagged there at the end for a fun trivia fact.
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It is far superior, but yes, back to the news. Apple hasn't made any changes in Apple maps yet, but it does redirect searches for Gulf of Mexico or Gulf of America to Gulf of Mexico. So clearly they are thinking about it. I wonder how long they will hold out. And I also wonder if a new administration comes in, if they'll change it back and it's just like a snip, snap, snip, snap.
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Up next, it's time for Toby's Trends.
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On Public, you can build a multi-asset investment portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
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Public also has Alpha, an AI-powered investment research assistant that can answer questions about any stock. They're a U.S.-based company and a member of FINRA with an award-winning customer support team trusted by millions.
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Yeah, that does not sound like your average cruise experience. Plus, everything is catered to adults on these kid free cruises, whether it's the entertainment parties or relaxing spaces throughout the ship.
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They've got the accolades, too. They were just voted the world's best cruise line by Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast readers for the second year in a row.
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Alright everyone, I have a bit of a bizarre trend for you today. Ankle watches. No, people aren't rocking Rolexes above their cankles. Instead, it's Apple watches that have migrated down from the metacarpals to the metatarsals.
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The New York Times reported that a growing number of people are relocating their Apple watches down south in pursuit of better fitness tracking or a workaround to everyday inconveniences. Say you have tattoos on your wrist or a skin condition that interrupts the watch's sensors. Put it on your ankle. Maybe you're a healthcare worker who is barred from wearing things on your wrist.
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Put it on your ankle. Or maybe your under-the-desk treadmill steps aren't getting counted while you work. Ankle watch could solve all your problems. The New York Times calls the small but growing group of believers ankle watch acolytes and describes how their fashion choice sometimes elicits some second or third glances while working out at a gym.
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One fitness influencer told the outlet that she often has to explain that, no, she's not on house arrest wearing an ankle monitor. She just likes wearing it down there. But Neil, my big issue with this trend is that the sensors aren't designed for ankle use, even if some people swear it tracks their steps more accurately when it is on their ankle.
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Gulf of America, Gulf of Mexico, back and forth.
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Well, don't bury the lead here. What are those good and valuable reasons why you put an Apple Watch on your wrist? You're the Toby's Trents.
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That really is the final point that I will add here is that wrist watch heart rate monitors are actually not very reliable at all. There is just something about the skin contact that gets interrupted every once in a while. It is firing this green colored light and seeing how many red blood cells reflect it back.
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So it's just not quite as accurate as something like a chest rate monitor, a chest heart rate monitor, or an arm heart rate monitor. So I will use my platform right now to say, if you are seriously into fitness tracking, go get a reliable heart rate monitor. The Apple Watch is, whether it's on your wrist or your ankle, isn't probably going to give you the most accurate data overall.
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Oh my gosh, you are a Google Maps user. Okay, but let's hear a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, have you ever tried to send money overseas? Unless you count buying Irish butter, then no. Consider yourself lucky. There's hidden fees, there's stress. By the end, you almost want to send a thank you note to your checkbook.
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Now let's sprint to the finish with some more headlines you may have missed. Up first, Elon Musk still hasn't closed the book on his beef with OpenAI. A consortium of investors led by the Doge chief has submitted an offer of $97.4 billion to buy out the nonprofit that controls OpenAI.
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It throws a multi-billion dollar wrench into Sam Altman's carefully laid plans to convert the company into a for-profit entity, something Elon has long railed against. Altman quickly rejected the offer, writing on X, No thank you, but we will buy Twitter for $9.74 billion if you want for some decimal-related smack talk. Neil, is this must-bid fully serious? Who knows?
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Yeah, it's literally the fiduciary duty of the nonprofits board to accept the bid that values it at a fair market price. And Musk has said that he or will actually continue to bid up to outbid whatever bid Altman and co. kind of come up with. So I don't think this is the end of it.
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I'm not sure if the board will ever get on board with Elon because the board is filled with some Sam Altman supporters. But it is a fascinating, again, I'm not sure how serious the bid is, but it is serious. He does have a consortium of investors.
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So I don't think this will be the last we hear of Elon Musk trying at the last gasp to regain control of the company that he and Sam Altman originally founded all those years ago.
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Yeah, under Trump's interpretation of this is that a lot of deals get killed because nobody wants to run afoul of this law. He says that every time they pick up a phone, they think that they might be going to jail. So he's trying to loosen these restrictions again. It also is just a pause on enforcement.
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They're saying they just want to get a better understanding of how this law, FCPA, actually functions. But remember, the intent of this law was to prevent American firms from taking part in a does roll and run in some parts of the world. It was supposed to be this bedrock principle of how Americans do business abroad and how they operate overseas.
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So you can see why there's some pushback and some alarm bells ringing that we are going to undermine this bedrock of kind of doing business with integrity abroad. But you see the DOJ did announce enforcement actions, 24 cases in 2024. So it isn't like this rampant thing that is constantly violated, but it is something that the DOJ does. does keep an eye on.
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126 million people tuned in to watch Patrick Mahomes throw the ball repeatedly to Eagles players in what was another record-setting Super Bowl. Fox's main broadcast averaged 111.5 million viewers, but the sugar on top was its free streaming service, Tubi, which drew 13.6 million to push it into record-setting territory.
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40-plus currencies, 24-7 customer support, no monthly fees.
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As cord cutting leads to drops in traditional TV viewing, the Super Bowl remains an unstoppable force. This was the third big game in a row to set a new viewership record. Neil, the only people happier than Fox execs right now are probably Kendrick Lamar fans.
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I know, I'm still reading all the, you know, the references in Karadzic Lamar's halftime performance. I feel like I'm studying for a test, trying to pick up everything that, you know, he dropped in that performance.
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Two takeaways from this. One, never knew the word busking until reading this story, which just means to play music on the street for donations. And two, Ed Sheeran loves India. He's there in India for the second year in a row, 15-day tour. And it also shows that demand for live music in India has been heating up. Ed Sheeran's got the rest of his tour to complete.
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So wise. If you want easy international payments, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business. If you're seeing a lot more open to work banners on LinkedIn this week, you're not alone. Meta began mass layoffs on employees across the world yesterday. According to reports, the company is cutting nearly 4,000 roles, equal to about 5% of its workforce.
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It's on the heels of Dua Lipa doing a concert there. Coldplay went on a multi-city tour as well. So I do think you are seeing the concert economy in India start to heat up. I don't know if he's going to like them anymore.
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I want you to share the podcast with someone who should test out the ankle watch trend. Maybe it's just a small wristed friend. Maybe it's someone with a sick wrist tattoo, but share with them and then report back as to how their ankle wearing went.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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These aren't your normal layoffs, though. Meta just reported record profits, a 48% operating margin, and the stock has gained 15 straight trading days, its longest streak ever. By every metric, this is a very healthy company. but Mark Zuckerberg thinks it can be healthier. These layoffs are performance-based, targeting underperforming employees as determined by internal talent evaluations.
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It's a continuation of principles laid out in Meta's vaunted year of efficiency, which started in 2023, and aims to streamline operations and redirect resources towards AI initiatives. Case in point, Meta plans to start hiring machine learning engineers and other AI-related roles over the next month, even as it trims its overall headcount.
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Neil, the performance termination, as Meta calls them, are upon us.
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And there has been almost a vibe shift, a lack of trust now between Silicon Valley companies and their employees because there used to be this model where employees had immense power. It's kind of what led to the nap pod in the office, the food every day, the perk-heavy culture. But now that vibe has shifted.
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And a lot of people who are affected by this most recent round of layoffs say it's actually a huge black mark on your employment record because companies calling them performance-based layoffs. Now you have to enter the workforce having being laid off from Meta under this label of saying you were an underperformer.
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Then bust out the cardboard boxes in Menlo Park. Meta's layoffs have begun. It's Tuesday, February 11th. Let's ride.
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So it really is, I mean, we're saying all these words, vibe shift, but it is distinctly a different era that we are entering into right now. And you're right that Zuck isn't shying away from it. He does say, if I think it can make the company better, why wouldn't I do it? I'm making the people you work with higher performers. So this should be a good thing overall for the company.
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Right. There is this interesting subtext to all these layoffs is the fact that these companies are technically developing employee replacing technology. AI agents are getting to the level where they can replace mid-level coders. And don't take my word for it. That is Mark Zuckerberg's opinion. He said that AI agents will match good mid-level engineers this year. That is a quote from 2025. So that's
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That is the subtext to it all that you're cutting roles so you can hire up an AI so you can technically cut more roles in the future.
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Yeah, let's actually go back to that 2018 year that you mentioned when Trump first instituted those 25 percent tariffs. on steel. At the time, he cited national security as the big reason for it, but said another reason why he wanted to do it was to strengthen domestic production. And what were the results from that? They were a little complicated. Technically, steel imports to the U.S. did fall.
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They fell 35% from 2014 to 2024. But domestic steel makers were still not producing enough to satiate U.S. steel demand. And they were still complaining that imports were continuing to harm them. They're
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Technically, yes, it did bolster the domestic industry, but it's just we don't quite have enough production here to fully replace the demand that you would get from importing from countries like Canada, countries like China.
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Yeah, you're right. There is a distinction between tariff threats that are aimed at, you know, getting countries to the negotiating table, dealing with things like fentanyl, dealing with things like migration and and those that address U.S. trade deficits, trade irritants. It looks like we're seeing this bifurcation of Trump's tariff strategy. One, let's go to the negotiated title.
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One, we're actually trying to bolster U.S. domestic manufacturing.
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I thought you were going to ask a penny for my thoughts on this one, Neil, but I will give you my thoughts anyway. Elon Musk has come out and said this is not going to be a huge savings for the government, but anytime we're spending more money on something that people don't actually use, that's an example of something we should probably change. But what if I told you...
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I didn't think anything, Neil, because I didn't even notice it. I used something called Apple Maps, which still has it as Gulf of Mexico. Yes, I will use this as an opportunity to advance my Apple Maps is superior to Google Maps. agenda. People still remember Apple matches original launch and how glitchy it was, but I'm telling you, give it another chance.
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Elon Musk didn't actually say that at all. And in fact, Barack Obama said it all the way back in a speech in 2013. So it really shows that this has been a decades-long debate about keeping the penny around. It is this very emblematic thing of government waste. It's not Huge amounts of government weight is $85 million in the grand scheme of things.
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But it's certainly one of those things where you look at it and say, it's just brutal to produce something that literally is worth one cent for over three cents. So you can just look at around the world, though, to see that other countries have successfully done this. Many would probably be surprised to learn that Canada got rid of its one cent coin more than a decade ago.
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They just round up or round down at this point. So it might be tough psychologically for American consumers to go to a convenience store and see their 99 cent Arizona iced tea rounded up to a dollar. There is a legitimate psychological tax that happens when that occurs.
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So maybe it's been tough to get Americans on board with it, but this could be finally the death knell for the penny that has just probably overstayed its welcome. Can I play devil's advocate?
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I mean, I'm not convinced really, because if you look at the cash transactions that happen in the U.S., 86.9% of all transactions in the U.S. were cashless in 2024. So there really isn't going to be You're not going to even know if you're using Apple Pay or a credit card and you're tapping.
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I don't think there's going to be this moment where you're like, oh, shoot, I just got rounded up or rounded down. So I do think that we're just moving into a cashless society.
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Right. Exactly. Exactly. That's the difference here is that, I mean, I guess some people still do use cash. Again, the 86.9% isn't 100%, but it does look like this is something that just has enough momentum behind it. I really do wonder, though, because part of the thing that keeps it around is just nostalgia for people. People don't want to get rid of this keepsake.
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They don't want to get rid of Abraham Lincoln, which, by the way, my fun penny fact is that Abraham Lincoln is technically the most reproduced piece of art in the world, the portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the penny, because there have just been so many of them. There's been half a trillion produced over its entire run.
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Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1st, 2025. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. Domino's has finally caved. No, they aren't getting rid of the pizza tracker. That's the greatest piece of technology ever.
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But they are putting stuffed crust on the menu, looking to rake in a dough like the rivals in what I am dubbing the cheesiest Toby's Trends we've had so far this year.
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The country's top pizza chain is rolling out Parmesan stuffed crust starting yesterday, hoping to appeal to younger customers willing to shell out extra cast for ooey gooey cheese filled edges, something the chain has previously resisted. Pizza Hut has been on the stuffed crust bandwagon for 20 years now.
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Papa John's and Little Caesars have also joined the cheesy arms race years ago, but Domino's is hoping to make up for lost time, looking to appeal to a new generation of pizza lovers that have never known a world without the stuffed delicacy. The delay in hopping on the trend has actually confused eaters.
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One survey found that 73% of Domino's customers already thought stuffed crust was on the menu. We're still 13 million customers a year. We're absconding to other chains just to get their stuffed crust fix. Neil, that is a lot of mozzarella leaving the bottom line. But now Domino's is finally trying its dairy best to recapture some of that business.
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But the thought process behind why it took 20 years to get to this point is actually insane. Really fascinating.
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That's nearly three times as long as the Gettysburg Address, which clocked in at about two minutes. A speech so long, it should have had an intermission, like the Brutalists. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil was looking at my screen time report the other day, and it was a little bit shocking. I thought you deleted TikTok.
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And it hasn't been this willy-nilly effort either. Their chief marketing officer said it's been one of the longest development efforts in company history. First, they did extensive market research, and they found that a lot of Stuffed Crust customers are actually those apex predators of the pizza ecosystem. They often spend more per transaction. They buy pizza more frequently.
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So they were missing out on that really big customer base. And then they also went through eight potential iterations of how to find not just the right recipe for Parmesan stuffed crust, but to how to best assemble it. Because one of the big problems with stuffed crust is it's a delicate process. You don't want that cheese oozing out of the edges.
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You don't want to, you know, sacrifice the structural integrity of the pizza. So Domino's did a lot of training and spent 12 weeks training franchisees at 7,000 stores on how to make it properly. They do not want the rollout to stumble at the finish line here. So I do think that Domino's, just speaking as Toby Howell here for a second, they got the best crust around already.
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Who are you speaking as otherwise? That's a good point, but just my own personal preferences are coming out here. I do think they have the best tasting crust already, so adding some cheese in that I think will do quite well in their foray here.
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Yeah, this was a shocker. McMullen did not issue a public statement. Kroger also declined to further comment. So I started searching around. I went to Reddit to see what they had figured out. And they are stumped too. So right now, things are being kept pretty tightly under wraps. But it is a pretty big shift here because McMullen was this lifer at this company. It's been there for four decades.
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And it is just the hits keep coming right now for Kroger because they tried to buy Albertsons. It didn't work. And then just to zoom out here, we have seen a particularly turbulent time for CEOs in corporate America over the last few years. CEO departures hit a record high in 2024. And we're already pacing faster than that this year, just a few months into 2025. So Things are rocky.
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We've already talked about the uncertainty earlier in the show. It looks like Kroger is entering a period where they're going to face similar sort of uncertainty. Yesterday, Anthropic announced a $3.5 billion funding round, bringing its valuation to $61.5 billion. Because when you're making frontier models, the money printer never runs out of ink.
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I did, but I spent an embarrassing amount of time in my brokerage account. It's been wild out there, and I can't stop looking.
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Founded by former OpenAI execs, the company's Claude chatbot has quickly become an industry favorite alongside ChatGPT. The funding comes as Anthropic's revenue has started to mature, recently hitting an annualized $1 billion in December, a 10x increase year over year, thanks mostly to enterprise clients like Zoom, Snowflake, Pfizer, and Novo Nordisk.
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It also struck a deal with Amazon to power its souped-up Alexa Plus, which we spoke about on the show last week. Neil Anthropic is now the second biggest AI startup behind OpenAI, passing Elon Musk's XAI with this latest round.
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Well, the Oscars numbers are in, and they are brutalist. Just under 18.1 million people tuned into the Academy Awards on Sunday, a 7% decrease from the year before. That total comes from a combination of normal linear viewership on ABC plus live streams on Hulu, which could help explain why the show had its first viewership drop in four years. Because Hulu fumbled the Oscars bag hard on this one.
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First, people had issues logging in with Down Detector, spiking with reports as the red carpet wrapped up. But then Hulu inexplicably shut off the live stream before the awards were given out for Best Actress and Best Picture. So instead of watching Mikey Madison and Enora give thank you speeches, viewers saw a thank you for watching message that falsely claimed the live event has now ended.
Morning Brew Daily
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Neil, disaster level performance from Hulu here.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
Yeah, they keep fumbling the bag here. And also, I mean, when we spoke about the Oscars on Monday, we said, ah, there was a lot of good momentum behind it. It looks like this was a pretty positive show overall. But we are seeing that 7% decrease year over year. Who knows how much it is actually attributable to Hulu just messing up big time here.
Morning Brew Daily
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But we talked about how a lot of Best Picture nominees are not these big box office successes anymore. They don't have wide appeal. So it looks like that's trickling down into the awards show as well with that decrease in viewership.
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Like upvoting every single episode we've ever posted on YouTube. Sure. Or, you know, working. Yeah, rethink possibility with Invesco QQQ. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosures in podcast description.
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I want you to share the show with someone in Canada, Mexico, or China. There is no 25% tariff on MBD texts in the international group chat.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
In the global Catan game, the U.S. is looking like a very cantankerous trading partner right now, which is creating a lot of uncertainty for business owners. Yesterday, if you looked at the ISM manufacturing report, which is
Morning Brew Daily
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Based on a survey of manufacturing companies looking at things like new orders, production, hiring, et cetera, almost every single comment in it was about uncertainty, was about hesitancy in doing business on account of these tariffs. Tariffs are creating a lot of uncertainty on both sides. They create rising input costs, which represents a challenge for manufacturers.
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US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
But there's also this backdrop of potentially shrinking orders, which suggests that demand is at risk of retreating. So they really are in a rock and a hard place right now. I have often cited the snip-snap meme from The Office. Michael is talking about getting a vasectomy, but businesses are living out this meme in real life when it comes to their investments.
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How can you plan on investing in the future without knowing what your costs will be going forward? So that is one thing that these companies are just looking at the current landscape and saying, I don't know what to do right now because these input costs are just going to rise so much. We don't know how to plan for the future.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
Then, turns out that the biggest Trump trade of them all was European defense stocks. It's Tuesday, March 4th. Let's ride.
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US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
Glad that you mentioned Chipotle there for a second because it's a good segue into how businesses are approaching this new environment. Some companies are just going to eat the extra cost and not try to pass it on to consumers. Chipotle CEO Scott Boatwright said, for now, they intend to keep costs the same for consumers even as some of its cost of goods moves higher. So that is one approach.
Morning Brew Daily
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Not everyone can do that, obviously. because other industries, let's look at specifically the car industry, that is really going to raise the cost of the input of what it takes to make cars, because these tariffs don't just raise the cost for foreign, it also raises the cost for US-built vehicles, because Domestic cars include a lot of parts from abroad, from places like Mexico specifically.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
So these levies on Mexico and Canada alone could add about $3,000 to the average U.S. car price. So if you're looking to buy a car right now, maybe get it done today because those input costs are going up, which will make the cost go up altogether.
Morning Brew Daily
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Yeah, these estimates are published pretty regularly as new economic data is released. So they can be quite volatile. That is kind of the precursor here. But Friday had this shock reading of negative 1.5%, which was led by a $153 billion trade deficit that was reported in January. That showed that firms were likely to front-loading imports ahead of tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
But then this crazy Monday reading, which saw negative 2.8% growth, was also driven by the fact that we had that soft manufacturing report that I had spoken about at the beginning of this segment. So it looks like data is coming in thick and fast. The Atlanta Fed is saying, whoa, it's not looking too great right now. We're seeing a lot of imports front-loaded.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
We're seeing a lot of slowdown in the manufacturing front, which is why we see a Trump session potentially looming on the horizon here. Moving on, European defense stocks have emerged as the apple of investors' eye early in 2025 as investors bet on a big surge in military spending across the region.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
As the Russian-Ukraine war stretches into a fourth year and Europe's decades-long security relationship With the U.S. looking shakier than ever, governments are gearing up for what looks like a major rearmament push.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
That has sent stocks soaring, with Europe's Aerospace and Defense Index climbing nearly 8% yesterday, good for its biggest single-day jump in nearly five years, and it's now up 30% on the year. At the heart of the rally is a harsh new reality. Europe may not be able to count on its longtime ally, the U.S., to come to its aid in a future conflict.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
The uncertainty was underscored by the tense White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, in which Ukraine, essentially Europe's front line against Russian aggression, pushed for firm security guarantees from the U.S. and got nothing in return. Companies like Francis Thales, Germany's Rheinmetall, Italy's Leonardo, and Sweden's Saab
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
all jumped 11% or more yesterday and are now some of the best performing companies in the world so far this year. So maybe the real Trump trade was European defense all along.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
Yeah, European defense companies have been strong performers since Russia invaded Ukraine all the way back in 2022. But that trade has certainly accelerated in the face of Trump's view on American support for Ukraine. Last year, EU nations spent about 2% of their combined GDP product.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
On defense, French President Emmanuel Macron has come out and said that he wants the bloc to aim for closer to 3% to 3.5% of GDP. The Secretary General of NATO also said that he wants European military spending to be north of 3%. Right now, only 23 of 32 NATO members hit that 2% goal. So a 3%, 3.5% spending of GDP would... correspond with a much bigger defense outlay.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
So you have these catalysts for these companies to trade a lot higher. And the European Stocks 600 Index is now beating the S&P 500 in year-to-date returns, which I don't think anyone saw coming when we entered 2025.
Morning Brew Daily
US Tariffs Start Today & Euro Defense Stocks Take Off
Let's go down the conga line, Neil, because this is another one to add to the list. Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank pledged to invest $500 billion into building AI infrastructure in the U.S. under that Project Stargate deal.
Morning Brew Daily
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Last week, Apple said it plans to spend more than $500 billion over the next four years to expand its manufacturing footprint in the U.S., and now here is this $100 billion pledge by TSMC. One of the big sticking points with TSMC setting up its Arizona factory was They were only building their legacy tech here. They weren't building their cutting-edge chips.
Morning Brew Daily
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They were reserving that technology for their home base in Taiwan. They are now saying that they will kind of scale up that manufacturing to make its most advanced chips, which is a big win for the U.S. as it tries to reshore some of its chip industry that it had outshored over the last decades or so.
Morning Brew Daily
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That is the worst part of it all. is that a fair amount of words of this speech were dedicated to talking about how he didn't want to go on too long, how this wasn't his first rodeo, to shushing the orchestra. If you're going to have a speech that long, at least use the words wisely, just to put his 5 minutes and 40 seconds spiel into perspective.
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Up next, it is time for Toby's Trends. So Neil, how'd you do on the morning market trivia quiz?
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That's pretty good. I ended up getting 3,133. I wonder how the rest of our listener scores compared to ours.
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And if you land at the top, you'll win bragging rights, a $200 Amex gift card, a newsletter feature, and a special prize. It's a win-win. Have fun and good luck. We'll see you on the leaderboard. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase.
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You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card. Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees.
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To get started, head to the Wallet app on your iPhone where you can apply in minutes and start using your Apple Card right away to watch that daily cash roll in. Let's ride. Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and savings by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City branch.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Additionally, with that time change in mind, it didn't make sense for us to keep calling ourselves Morning Brew Daily. So to reflect the change, we're going to be rebranding as Afternoon Brew Daily, which I am very excited about. ABD got a nice ring to it. And that's about it. That is our big announcement. Is there anything else I'm forgetting, Neil? There might be one more thing. April Fool's.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
You can even pair your Quip Ultra to the Quip app on your phone to get a personalized look at your oral health.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Of course, this is not entirely an altruistic letter. Over the past 14 months, BlackRock has been shelling out a lot of money to buy these private asset classes. Just shelled out $12.5 billion to buy global infrastructure partners, and it's in the process of completing another $12 billion acquisition of a private credit firm.
Morning Brew Daily
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And then also, kind of the coup de grace of all this is that they bought this new data provider called Prequin that actually... aims to make private valuations less opaque for investors because it's very easy to come to a valuation of a public company, just shares outstanding times, share price.
Morning Brew Daily
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But private investments don't have shares outstanding, so it's much harder to assign a valuation to something like a port or something like that rather than an actual S&P 500 company. So this is all part of this grand vision to lower those walls. And yeah, maybe it is something that will benefit... normal everyday investors.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
But obviously, Fink acknowledged the fact that, yes, this stands to benefit BlackRock as well.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
And then one of the things that people noticed from Fink's letter this year is that if you go back a few years, one of BlackRock's big new initiatives was sustainable investing, ESG investing. And if you go down through the letter this year, all of that language has been removed. He's completely changed his tune. It was actually a very apolitical letter in general.
Morning Brew Daily
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He didn't want to step on any toes. So that also speaks to just the general, I don't know, maybe unease of an asset manager like BlackRock in the current administration. They don't want to step on anyone's toes. And they also are just kind of walking back from some of those hot-button social and political issues that it was really leaning into as recently as 2020.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Up first, Newsmax's stock debuted on the New York Stock Exchange yesterday and did the max in its name justice. The conservative media outlet opened at $14 a share, a 40% jump from its $10 IPO price. then proceeded to skyrocket as high as 735% during its first trading day, raising $75 million in the process. Compared to other recent IPOs, Newsmax's performance stands out.
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I mean, I don't even own a business and I'm still stressed. What if I miss deductions or worse?
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Another debutant, Coreweave, had a disappointing first trading day, which saw the AI company fall about 10%. The success of Newsmax didn't come from major funds suddenly getting jazzed about the prospects of investing in cable news. It was mainly retail investors pumping the stock in a GameStop-esque moment, more than anything related to the company itself.
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Newsmax lost more than $55 million in the first six months of 2024 on revenue of roughly $80 million, and now it's worth nearly $11 billion.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Wonder which high-ranking official with direct access to the FAA made this happen. Taylor Swift, I'm looking at you. No, I'm just kidding. This new system came down during the pipeline, during the Biden administration. So it's been in the works for a while. This has been something that the billionaire class has not been happy with for a long time now.
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They say it's a big safety concern if you know exactly where you are. And you're right. This cottage industry, I mean, Jack Sweeney was this college kid who just suddenly became the subject of ire of all the billionaires in the world because he ran all these private jet tracking accounts. I feel like it's just a bygone era of social media now.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
We're never going to get those insights into those 20-minute private jet rides that some of these billionaires were taking from California cities to California cities. And you're right. Yeah. We're not going to be able to track who's going to the Masters. It's bad for the sports industry.
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That actually sounds very reassuring, but what if I still get stuck halfway through?
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Another Jack Sweeney will arrive. Well, we already talked about Newsmax, so let's keep the Max stories rolling with one about Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming service. Some of the suits at Warner Bros. thought another rebrand for its Max streaming service was in order. Don't worry, the artist formerly known as HBO is still gonna go by Max, but it is ditching its bright blue color scheme
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to return to a more monochromatic black and white palette that evokes the iconic HBO logo of old. The reasoning? Back when Max first launched in 2023, the blue was added to make the service seem more approachable for families and kids to reflect the addition of Discovery content.
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But the latest decision appears to swing the pendulum back the other way to bring back the adult feel to the brand, which was originally known for its mature programming. How many more revans though, Neil, can we take at this point?
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I was fully one of those people saying, go back to the HBO branding. But it does speak to maybe an elevated aesthetic that Apple TV and HBO are both after.
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No, I am totally buying this because I've always wanted to make sourdough, but it seems so intimidating, like keeping it alive. The fact that it's a living organism at all always freaked me out. So I absolutely think that an automatic water and flour dispenser is exactly what I need. And I think it is a great idea.
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Although it did get some pushback from some baking traditionalists in the Morning Brew Slack channel. Someone said, you're supposed to forget about your starter in the back of your fridge for three months and then discover it to your own horror. which is also a good way to make sourdough bread as well.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
AI models are once again the subject of a raging debate this week, but this time it's not open AI we're talking about. No, this week the AI models that are driving debate are actual models, digital replicas of real-life people who are indistinguishable from their human counterparts and might soon appear in online marketing campaigns, the Business of Fashion reported last week.
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The fast fashion giant H&M announced that it is partnering with agencies to create AI-generated twins of 30 or so fashion models this year for use on their social media and marketing campaigns.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
The company is in the exploratory phase of the project and stressed that real humans would be, quote, in full control of when the digital twin would be used, and it will, of course, get paid when it is being used. Still, it's opened up an uncomfortable can of worms in the fashion industry.
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Critics say that while models may benefit from having a likeness that can extend beyond in-person shoots, other pieces of the creative puzzle like photographers, lighting specialists, and hair and makeup stylists are all going to be affected. It echoes similar worries Hollywood had that led to a strike in 2023 with writers and actors pushing back on AI creeping into the film and TV industry.
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Still, H&M are not the first to test out AI-generated models. Hugo Boss and Levi's have already given it a whirl, and they likely won't be the last. But Neil, what I think is especially unsettling about what H&M is doing is just how scary accurate the representations are.
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The first time one of the models, Vilma Schoberg, saw her digital twin, she said, it was interesting how good it actually was, noting that not even her boyfriend, could tell the difference between her and her AI doppelganger, which both speaks to the quality of this technology and also landed the boyfriend in the doghouse.
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Right, and I do think that they think being upfront about their AI usage is the way forward here, and involving the actual stakeholders in the process, which are the models themselves, is a much better way of going about it than trying to replace them on the low-low. So I do think that that is one of the reasons why this is maybe getting a little bit more
Morning Brew Daily
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I don't know, consideration from the industry at whole versus another way of going about it. So how does this actually work though? To create the twins, H&M takes just a lot of pictures of the models in motion. They go all the way down to details like birthmarks, how they move, how they walk, their movement patterns. to generate enough data to create this accurate twin.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
And I mean, I mentioned the boyfriend thing, but a lot of people, they surveyed people within the own company H&M, and only a slim majority could actually distinguish the difference. So it looks like the technology is finally meeting the moment where it's at. And I do think if you are a model,
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
and you want to expand your visibility, what a great way to do it is, I mentioned at the beginning of the show that you can be at a shoot in Tokyo while also at a shoot in Paris at the same time. This allows you to basically expand your likeness across the globe with no real bounds of geography anymore, which could be a major unlock of revenue for these people.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Then fashion giant H&M is making digital clones of its models so they can walk a runway in Tokyo while doing a photo shoot in Paris. It's Tuesday, April 1st. Let's ride. Good morning, everyone. Savor that word, though, because we do have an announcement to make. After more than 500 episodes of bringing you the news bright and early and more than 500 alarm clocks going off at 4 a.m.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
I do think this is a how far we've come moment as well. Because if you go back to 2011, H&M tried to work with AI back then. At that time, the technology was not exactly where it was today. And so they were superimposing the heads of real models onto computer-generated mannequins for a swimwear campaign. That was universally panned. So there is some parallels and some symmetry here showing AI.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
just how far the technology has arrived and just how much H&M has been trying to do something like this over the last decades. So we'll see if the wider industry starts embracing this practice or if it's one of those things, much like happened in Hollywood, that gets a lot of pushback and ends up not actually becoming a widespread thing.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Yeah, farmers are contending with a lot of challenges right now. One of the issues is that USDA and aid funding is in limbo right now, with the new administration coming in and pausing a lot of that aid. And also, you have the tariffs that are being lobbed at their main trading partners, China, Canada, and Mexico.
Morning Brew Daily
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And then also, deportations are impacting an already tight agricultural labor market. And the This is a very uncertain industry. I mean, even beyond those things I just mentioned, just weather is one of the hardest reasons why it's so hard to turn a profit as a farmer. So the government has typically stepped in and tried to smooth over some of those uncertainties with these aid programs.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
But now with those aid programs up in the air, the word uncertainty has just come roaring back. And a lot of farmers are going, where does this actually leave us?
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
on the dot, we dug into the analytics a little bit and found that the majority of you were actually listening to the show in the afternoon. So we're following what the data is telling us. And starting this week, we're going to be shifting to an afternoon schedule.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
ID yet, you really got to get on it because the May 7th deadline is looming. Those who don't use a passport to fly will have to show TSA a real ID, aka a federally compliant license, in order to board a domestic flight to go visit your grandparents in West Palm. How do you know if you're already part of the real ID gang?
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
The marking varies by state to state, but for the most part, look at the top of your card for a gold star. There's a lot of you, though, who do not get a gold star when it comes to time management. About one in travelers currently flying in the U.S. are not Real ID compliant, according to the TSA, and that has led to insane demand at DMVs.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
People across the country have reported hours-long lines, especially in places like Pennsylvania, where the opt-in rate for Real IDs sits at just 26%. In Florida, demand is so high that a network of scalpers has popped up, selling off DMV appointments they've hoarded for a profit. Now, getting stuck in a long line may not be entirely your fault.
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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
The federal government has delayed the deadline for enforcement three times now, but this time it is pinky promising that you better get your ducks in a row. Neil, I feel like this is something we've all seen on airport signs for years now, but it's finally happening.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Yeah, it is interesting, too, the approach that some states are taking. On Illinois' Secretary of State's website, they say, don't rush the date. Real ID can wait, which sounds to be exactly opposite of what we're saying right now. Basically, they're saying, don't put this massive crush on DMVs right now. We cannot support you. You can just fly with your passport, get a real ID a little bit later.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
But it is just classic, you know, I don't know, Americans procrastinating until the very last moment. I mean, May 7th is coming up here.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
I encourage you to get all your documents in line too because a lot of these horror stories we are reading where people who waited hours in these DMV lines and then show up at the front and say, oh, you don't have the appropriate documents you need to verify your identity to get this new real ID. So make sure you have your ducks in a row.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
Make sure you get this done, especially if you have some trips coming up in the summer. Up next, we're talking about Larry Fink's annual letter. Have you heard what's happening in Ohio lately? The list is long, folks. The economic development corporation Jobs Ohio is making it insanely easy and appealing for businesses to lay down roots in the Buckeye State.
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Yeah, you can really see their work in the accolades Ohio's received lately. CNBC ranked it at number seven in its list of top states for doing business and number two for the cost of doing business.
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The world's best get better in Ohio. Learn why companies like Andruil, Honda, and Intel are moving to Ohio. Head to JobsOhio.com slash WhyOhio. That's JobsOhio.com slash W-H-Y-Ohio.
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Technology can help us optimize some of life's most basic tasks. We've even got tech to help us brush our teeth.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
It has a dynamic LED touch bar that lets you choose between 16 different brushing intensities from sensitive to deep clean for up to 15 times more plaque removal versus a manual toothbrush.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will shock you more than the two brothers on White Lotus. For my first number, if it feels like everyone you know is talking about the government's signal group chat, they are.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
The Atlantic story describing how its editor was mistakenly included in a group chat where officials planned an attack in Yemen has easily become the top. top news story of the year globally, according to Axios.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
The article, headlined, The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans, has the most social media engagement of any English language article of 2025 since it was released on Monday, likely due to its shock factor, implications for national security, and extreme meme-ability.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
It's great news for The Atlantic, the 167-year-old magazine that's had trouble evolving its business model as the news industry went from print to digital. Well, having an article go nuclear is one way to make money. A spokesperson for The Atlantic told Axios this story was one of the top subscription-driving stories for the magazine of all time.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
New subscribers probably kept rolling in yesterday because The Atlantic published a new article with more messages from the group chat after Trump administration officials claimed the text contained no classified information.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
For my next number, a Netflix series has broken a major television industry barrier, becoming the first streaming show to top the UK's most-watched TV charts. If you guessed the show is adolescence, bingo, that's the one.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
This four-part series, launched two weeks ago, has taken the UK and the world by storm over its unsparing portrayal of a 13-year-old boy suspected of killing a female classmate and the role smartphones may have played in radicalizing the boy. Adolescents' impact has been felt well beyond the Netflix top 10 list, entering the broader conversation around kids going down social media rabbit holes.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Since the show was released, the UK's education secretary said she would begin researching what a smartphone ban in English schools might look like. Prime Minister Keir Starmer even weighed in, mentioning that he was watching the show with his two kids at home and vowed to take action to address the, quote, fatal consequences of young men consuming harmful content online.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Toby, the co-creator of Adolescence, Jack Thorne, has made a couple of shows now hoping to stir political debate. He's found that and major commercial success with this one.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
My final number is a jarring indication of just how professionalized college sports has become. As the Sweet 16 for the men's basketball tournament tips off today, only three of the 16 teams remaining have more than three starters who began their college careers at their current schools.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
And that's because NIL and the booming transfer portal are incentivizing players to switch teams so they can secure more money, similar to how free agency plays out at the professional level. In college, that means players typically leave a smaller school for a much wealthier program. Maybe Florida Atlantic University offers the best example of this.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
This team was an incredible Cinderella story of the 2023 men's tournament, making it to the final four as an underdog nine seed. That team's three leading scorers and its head coach are all in March Madness this year, just on different teams. Head coach Dusty May and one player left for Michigan. Another went to Arkansas and another decamped for Florida.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Toby, this explosion in transfers is the real March Madness.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
It's a catch-22. You either get expensive tech no one can manage or something easy that doesn't really protect you. Sophos ends that. No trade-offs, just real security that works. It is a perfect symphony of security, enterprise-grade tech harmonizing with built-in AI that learns from every threat, with a 500-person team watching your back 24-7, acting as conductors.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Yeah, I guess the problem or the existential question is what happens to these smaller schools when all of the bigger ones can just gobble up all of their players after this season? I mean, the transfer portal, sorry, it's a hard word to say, opened this week in which players can announce their intention to switch schools. Already, in just a few days, 1,300 students.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Men's college basketball players have signaled interest to change teams.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So next season, we're going to see all these players who are on all these teams switch, and they'll probably go to the wealthier schools that can pay them NIL deals, and it'll lead to a situation right now in the men's tournament where the Sweet 16 comprises of only four conferences, which is the first time that has ever happened.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Well, particularly the Rays, as a Tampa guy yourself, you know that that stadium, the Trop, did not necessarily have a large crowd each day. So maybe downsizing will be good. But overall, we're on uncharted territory for MLB with two points. minor league stadiums being host to major league. And I think it is overall an embarrassing look for teams to be homeless like this.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
And it shows the gap between what their expectations are of public funding of large stadiums and what the public now, after years of pushback, is willing to spend. So that's why you're seeing the A's in Sacramento for the foreseeable future. The Rays had bad luck with the hurricane, but their stadium deal is also a debacle. They are in purgatory, real estate purgatory as well.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So I would say it is generally an embarrassing and not a good look for MLB to have two teams playing in minor league stadiums when they should be playing in major league stadiums and accruing all the revenue that comes with ticket sales.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Well, in minor league and in the spring training this year, they tested what would be the most significant change in MLB history. And this is the automated ball strike challenge system there. They've been testing this in the minor leagues for the past three years. But again,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Soon coming to MLB, maybe not this season, but maybe next season, they will have robot ups essentially where if you are a pitcher or a catcher or a batter that doesn't think the human ump called the right call, you can tap your helmet and they will send it to a robot ump challenge to see if they got it right.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So that of all the rule changes you mentioned, having robot umps come into play into this game would be a massive rule change. But the biggest changes I'm expecting this year are coming in the stands, and I want to talk about the new ballpark food with you as we get into this baseball season. I'll mention one of these new ballpark foods that are coming out across the country.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I want to hear your take. The first one is S'mores Quesadillas, and that's going to be at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
With Sophos, it is easy to make beautiful music without hiring a full IT department.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
All right, let's wrap it up there. Thank you for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake are our associate producers. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup says play ball. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
I mean, I'm always advocating for more biking. Analysts at Wedbush Securities called this a hurricane-like headwind that is about to rock the global auto sector, sending the average car price in the United States up between $5,000 and $10,000. Nearly half of all new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. were assembled outside the U.S. And then vehicles assembled in the U.S.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
contain nearly 60 percent of foreign sourced parts. So when you're talking about all those parts crossing borders from Mexican factories to American factories and back to Canada before they're finally at your dealer's lot, every single time that crosses the border, that is going to get hit with a 25 percent tariffs.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Toyotathon is on hold after President Trump announced 25% tariffs on foreign cars.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Auto industries, auto companies globally are set to have $75 billion in annual costs loaded up upon them, according to Bernstein, and they are going to pass along those costs to customers. Trump and the Trump administration kind of acknowledges that there might be short-term disruption for their long-term goal of bringing, of, you know, supercharging the domestic auto manufacturing industry.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
But that's just not how this global auto supply chain has worked over the past few decades under free trade agreements, where you have factories spread out across the world, across North America, especially without any tariffs.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
These tariffs did have some supporters, and one powerful group that said they endorsed these tariffs is the United Auto Workers Union, Sean Fain, who's the head of that union. said the tariffs would end the free trade disaster that has devastated working-class communities for decades. It ends the race to the bottom in the auto industry, fixes broken trade deals.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
So, labor unions in the United States who represent auto workers, plotted this. Meanwhile, on the other side of the border, Canadian Chamber of Commerce and other Canadian politicians were absolutely irate, as they have been over tariffs for months.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, Ontario is the bastion of the Canadian auto industry, employs a million people, said he wants to inflict as much pain as possible on Americans while protecting Canadian jobs. So we're starting to see a trade war play out where the United States slaps tariffs on other countries and then they retaliate on the United States.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
In today's edition of Wanna Feel Old, The Office premiered on NBC 20 years ago this week, and the nostalgia marketing is in full swing. The restaurant chain Chili's, which played a major role in The Office, announced it would open its first location in the show's setting of Scranton, Pennsylvania on April 7th. But it won't be any old Chili's.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
You could. I mean, this sale price is much lower. than what it was bought for 10 years ago. Family Dollar is just kind of a disaster of a business. It recorded an operating loss of $1.8 billion in the latest fiscal year, closed 1,000 of its locations last year.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
It also got this record fine from the DOJ for $42 million for violating safety standards after it was found to have sold items that were stocked in a rat-infested warehouse. So Absolutely nothing went right for Family Dollar after Dollar Tree bought it in 2015.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
And, you know, we've all felt this feeling of a weight being lifted off of our shoulders where we had a tough conversation and now we don't have to do it anymore. And selling Family Dollar by Dollar Tree is exactly what that is.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
When you hit the bars with your banker friends this weekend, they are buying the first round and probably the second. Average Wall Street bonuses surged 34% to a record $47.5 billion, according to the New York State Comptroller. It's the first significant increase in bonuses since the COVID pandemic and reflects the 90% jump in Wall Street profits last year.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
A bigger pie means bigger slices for each worker. the average annual bonus per Wall Street employee jumped by about a third to nearly $245,000, about three times the median annual income in the United States. This is all great news for bankers, of course, but it's also great news for finance-obsessed New York City, where one in 11 workers are tied directly or indirectly to the securities industry.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Wall Street workers have to pay taxes on those bonuses, and they'll send $600 million more in state income tax revenue and $275 million more for the city compared to 2023. Those numbers are closely watched by the state's money counters because New York receives 19% of its taxes from Wall Street alone. Whether the good times will last is unclear.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
It'll have chalk art mural decor that matches Chili's locations in the early 2000s. Pay homage to the chain's many cameos on the show. And Brimback, the awesome blossom onion appetizer that was pulled from menus in 2008. Of course, several members of the Office cast are being enlisted in an ad campaign. Toby, will you feel God in that Chili's?
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
The New York comptroller warned that, quote, increasing uncertainty in the economy amid significant federal policy changes may dampen the outlook for parts of the securities industry in 2025. So maybe you grab the third round.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
It's got more nuance, but the bottom line is that the banking sector did really well last year, and people were paid handsomely for that. The question now turns to this year is, can this run last? You mentioned the banking index was up a ton last year. All these banks scored record profits, JP Morgan record profits. But
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
The start of the year has been a little slower than expected, and you have recruiters and other people in the HR industry around finance saying maybe there could be some job losses if the deal-making doesn't pick up as expected. Deal volume in the U.S. was actually down 0.7% this year so far compared to the same period last year.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
If you take out Google's acquisition of Wiz, which is $32 billion, the deal volume is actually down 9% from the previous year. So, But investment bankers are hoping that the deal activity starts to pick up as expected this year because that will lead to even more bigger bonuses next year.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
Thinking about expanding your business? Lean on one of retail's most trusted names when you sell your products on Walmart.com.
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Trump Drops 25% Tariffs on Cars & 'Family Dollar' Sold for $1B
When you sell on Walmart Marketplace, you get access to a network of millions of customers and programs to help you scale your biz. And it just takes a few clicks to get started.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement and visceral power.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
But Toby, but Toby, how can there be Neil's numbers if Neil is still out enjoying his vacation? Because Anne and I put our heads together and came up with some other alliterations to bring you three stats from the week's news that would make Neil proud. Introducing Toby's tallies and Anne's analysis. For my first tally, America's turn away from religion appears to have been halted for now.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And the main issue is, unlike some snakes that flee when they see you, Russell's viper, very quick to strike when threatened.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
According to new research from Pew, after years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has stabilized significantly. with 62% of Americans identifying as Christian. The study also revealed that spirituality is still a big part of American life.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
92% of adults say they hold one or more of the spiritual beliefs that Pew asked about, with 85% saying they believe in God or a universal spirit. Now, if you zoom out, the country has certainly grown more secularized. Religiously unaffiliated adults came in at 29%, up from 16% in 2007, while the share of those identifying as Christian declined from nearly 8 in 10 back in 2007 to 6 in 10 today.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
If you look at the long term, it's a story of decline in American religion, Gregory Smith, a director at Pew, told the New York Times. But it's a completely different story if you look at the short term, which is a story of stability over the last four or five years. And it looks like the country isn't secularizing at the rate many thought it was.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
threatened so they are very cranky they hang out in rice fields too so you can't really see them nasty stuff but before we jump into our ad and the rest of our show i do want to leave people on a happy note crespo the author of the paper said even though most of the results were roughly as expected there were a few surprises that caught my attention one that springs to mind is the asian giant hornet being much lower on the scale only being classified as a category one
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Far from bringing red its last rites, religion isn't going anywhere quite yet.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Right. You are right. There is a little bit of a gap between age groups. Obviously, older people tend to be more religious than younger people, and that gap is only growing in the modern age. But I will say, just look at some of these centers of American power, and you can see why America is embracing religion again. I mean, in Washington, President Trump, J.D. Vance, they talk a lot about God.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
In Hollywood, there's a lot of shows about faith, spirituality. I mean, Conclave is up for best picture at the Oscars. Latest season of White Lotus talks a lot about spirituality. Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. I mean, this is a reality TV show, but it's still centered around religion. Even look at Silicon Valley, too.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
The current obsession right now is call it religion-adjacent products like something like generative AI, artificial intelligence. People are trying to live longer. There's this idea towards immortality. So all of these are tangential, but you can all see how they feed into this idea of spirituality remaining consistent and persistent across multiple generations in America.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
My second tally is zero, as in the amount of things that operate correctly when your last name happens to be null. Null is the word that computer scientists chose decades ago to mean no value. But as the Wall Street Journal found, when you're a human with a last name that means no value, you are met with a lifetime of challenges from processing errors to non-existent logins.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Null was first used 60 years ago, coined by the British computer scientist named Tony Hoare. It has since infiltrated most of the systems that make America run today, from hotel reservations to government agency forms. And while Horne was almost certainly not thinking of people with the 4,000th, 910th most common last name when he first chose to use null, he does regret it, calling it his
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
billion dollar mistake due to all the time wasted for programmers and the pain is inflicted on users. Nontra Null, a Null who took her husband's last name, told the Wall Street Journal that she has had lots of headaches since making the name change.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
A decade ago, she tried to fly to India for a friend's wedding, but the Indian consulate told her their computer system could not process her last name. She ended up not going, and to this day, hotel reservations are still a pain. And there are a lot of these instances, all because computers don't like your last name.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So good news, no need to stay up late worrying about Asian giant hornets, as I'm sure many of you are. Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. And LinkedIn is known for its precision targeting, letting you reach people by industry, job title, and company. But really what makes it great is all the bad targeting it helps you avoid.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
I would love to. I mean, that's the dream right there. I mean, for a long time, one of Argentina's biggest exports over the years has been its soccer players. I mean, obviously, everyone knows Lionel Messi, players like Carlos Tevez, Mascherano, Otamendi, Dybala, Martinez. The list goes on. There's lots of these players that have moved over to Europe. Suddenly, now, though...
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
some of those players are returning home because of these bigger salaries. Call it the Javier Millet effect. One issue that some economists have said about this is that you do not want this to create a trade imbalance. And what I mean by that is, Right now, when the peso is strengthening, you can go across to places like Chile, your neighbor, and your dollar, your peso goes much further there.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And so you can start bringing goods back that you are buying on the cheap, bringing back to your own country. You go to places like Brazil as well. When that happens, you can kind of create this trade imbalance. When you're going out and shopping for all these players, it might...
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
do stuff that will create something that will potentially bring back some of the inflation that you've worked so hard to kind of eliminate at this point. So right now it sounds good. You do want to bring some of these expensive players home, but you don't want it to lead to something that could go towards kicking off inflation once more.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Now, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Up first, Jeff Bezos ignited an internet firestorm yesterday. by announcing an overhaul to the Washington Post opinion section, saying it will now only publish pieces that champion personal liberties and free markets.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
The move prompted the resignation of opinion editor David Shipley and marks a major strategic shift from the newspaper's traditional broad spectrum of viewpoints, as Bezos now intends to leave dissenting opinions for other outlets to publish. The decision sparked a lot of criticism,
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
and concern among journalists and readers who fear it may further erode the publication's editorial independence and diversity of perspectives. And democracy dies in darkness, but in this case, it looks like the owner of the paper is turning out the lights in some sense.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
It's been a tough couple of months, too, for Washington Post. I mean, go back to October. Remember, the newspaper decided to not endorse a presidential candidate, a move defended by Bezos at the time. That led to about 300,000 subscribers defecting. We'll see if this latest unpopular decision might lead to some more defections, as you said.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Oh, I think it is exactly what you said. They are cozying up to the current administration right now. I mean, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick explicitly tied the investment to some of Trump's policies, saying this is exactly what the Trump administration is all about, which is building and manufacturing and restoring in America, investing in America, building in America.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So he was thanking Eli Lilly for doing what the president was hoping they would do, bringing back some of those manufacturing processes, investing in America again, especially because pharmaceutical business in particular has been under a microscope recently, specifically pharmaceutical benefit managers, places like that.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
The last thing you want is your ad budget going to waste on people who will never buy. Every mistargeted impression is money down the drain.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So I do think that with the looming threat of tariffs, if they do not manufacture products in the U.S., it was enough for them to say, hey, we're We are open to, we are amenable to putting billions of dollars in investment towards developing these very popular class of drugs in the United States.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Finally, last night, as you were brewing your chamomile tea, intuitive machines sent up another lander towards the moon. Remember, this is the company which has the title of being the only private sector enterprise on Earth that has made a safe touchdown on the moon.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Unfortunately, after that safe touchdown in the moon's South Pole region, the vehicle broke a leg and landed on its side, then tipped over on the edge of a crater. This time, Intuitive Machines is hoping for better luck Its Athena spacecraft is moonward bound as we speak after hitching a ride on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which took off at around 7.15 p.m. last night.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
The six-legged lander, roughly the size of a telephone booth, will take about a week to reach its destination, where it hopefully won't tip over this time and collect some important data instead.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
It was transmitted. It was really sad though, because you know, it got there, everyone cheered because it technically it did land on the moon. And again, it holds that title of being the only private enterprise who ever accomplished that. So everyone was cheering, but then it tipped over and everyone's like, Oh, so close, but no cigar here.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So this has definitely been something that a lot of private sector enterprises are going after. I mean, right now, there's multiple private sector spacecrafts going towards the moon as we speak. There's another one from Austin, Texas-based Firefly. It's called Blue Gross. There's another lander from Japan-based iSpace that it will touch down on the moon this spring.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So clearly, the moon is becoming this destination that is pulling a lot of money from the private sector. hopefully it doesn't actually tip over and we get some good data this time around. That is all the time we have for today and great show as always. Let's roll these credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
With LinkedIn ads, you get B2B targeting that actually makes sense. So your message reaches the right audience and your budget isn't spent on empty calories.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Echenna Naogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is trying to book a flight to Vietnam to go find Neil, but the system won't accept their last name. I wonder why. Devin Emery is our chief content officer in our show's production of Morning Brew.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Anne Barry. Today, Amazon unveiled a spruced up Alexa that might actually be useful for something other than checking the weather.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
I mean, first of all, we just got to sing the praises of NVIDIA. This really put the finishing touches on one of the greatest years ever for a large cap company. I mean, 78% increase in revenue. Sales for the full year more than doubled to $130 billion. data center revenue has increased about tenfold over the past two years. You just don't see this kind of stuff. This is not normal.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
In the past two years, the stock is up over 440%. It's got a market cap of over $3 trillion, but that is what you get when you are selling shovels, selling picks in a gold rush. Yesterday, then, was mostly about answering those lingering questions, as you mentioned, from investors, from analysts, about what the AI boom is going to look like in one year's time, in two years' time.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And so far, it looks pretty good. Their forecast was implying year-to-year growth of about 65% from a year earlier. Obviously, it's not going to be, you know, those 100%, 200% year-over-year growth that we've been seeing over the last two years because it's just simply not sustainable at the scale they are right now.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
But I do think it quelled some of those fears, quelled some of those deep-seek fears, saying that, hey, this is a model that isn't going to cause people to use less chips. It probably will cause them to use more chips to train models that are on a similar level. So I do think it was – the future looks pretty bright.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Yeah, you are absolutely right. The market goes as NVIDIA goes at this point. Let's dive into demand post DeepSeek a little bit. So obviously, NVIDIA raised some questions about NVIDIA to sell its newest generation Blackwell model. Jensen Huang pushed back on the idea yesterday, saying that DeepSeq popularized reasoning models that will need more chips.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
It's Thursday, February 27th. Let's ride.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
He actually said that the demand for the next generation of AI models will need 100 times more compute than older models. And the result of that, a lot of people think that mostly NVIDIA's chips are used for training these new models, which is true. They are used to train the models. But also, you need these chips to...
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
do this process called inference, which is inference is when a model is making predictions or decisions based on new data. So how it works is basically the AI models are trained on these large amounts of data to learn these patterns. It eats the whole internet, as we've been saying.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
But once they're trained, when the model is deployed out in the real world, they have to make these predictions on real world data. Whenever you prompt a reasoning model like OpenAI's O1 or something like that, it has to go through this process of applying what it learned. And that input is called inference.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And that's what Jensen Huang is pointing to and saying, all of these thinking models are going to require far more compute than the previous generation of models, which is why we feel so good about continued demand for our AI chips.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. It is small right now, but it saw 103% rise on year-over-year basis. So I think you are totally right in calling that out as this growth opportunity for NVIDIA going forward. Alexa, Amazon's oftentimes frustrating voice assistant, is getting an AI makeover, so you can do more than just set timers for cooking rigatoni with it.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
The revamped service, now powered by generative AI, has been dubbed Alexa Plus and requires a monthly $20 subscription fee to access, or it's free to Prime members. The shiny new features were on display at a launch event yesterday. A video showed it booking concert tickets, restaurant reservations, and even texting a babysitter. She's useful, Amazon exec Panos Panay said after the demo.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
She'll learn the rhythm of your life and proactively take action with you. Amazon thinks they are finally drawing closer to the all-knowing Star Trek-y voice assistant that founder Jeff Bezos envisioned when he originally conceived of Alexa. In the years since the tech debuted, she hasn't been all that transformative.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Most consumers use her for very simple tasks like checking the weather or playing music, according to Forrester Research. But now the hope is the injection of AI will take it from a glorified kitchen timer to something entirely new and turn the money-losing device business into a growth opportunity.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Also, I just want to say sorry to anyone listening to this on a speakerphone or on their TVs whose Alexas I just set off. I know that's fun. But Anne, what do we think about Alexa Plus?
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Yeah, I do think another problem with the Alexa device unit in general has just been it's remained very unprofitable for Amazon. They've never charged for access to Alexa. The hope was that people would use it to do online shopping, but that never really took off as a monetization route.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And the devices themselves are usually priced well below the cost it takes to actually make them because they thought they would get this added revenue from people shopping on their speakers. So they've kind of stumbled around. They've been in this – a little bit of a funk recently.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
New CEO Andy Jassy came in and kind of pared down the devices unit because he was looking at it and saying, you guys are not profitable. Let's figure out a way to reduce headcount a little bit here. But they kind of stumbled into this – generative AI revolution, and now suddenly these devices do have a pathway towards being useful. People can integrate them into their daily lives.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
They can do things like order food on them, make a restaurant reservation in a much more conversational manner that's better than the stilting one thing I say. Alexa responds in this very jilted voice and then comes back and forth. It's just not very natural. They think this will be a much more natural co-pilot to your life as you described it.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Well, I'm actually a Prime member already, so it does fold into it. But they think if they can just, the incremental revenue they can get from people who do have an Alexa device in their house who might say, all right, maybe let's try to turn this into something useful. They do think it can lead to meaningful revenue because the devices are pretty widespread.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So maybe generative AI just saved this unit that wasn't doing so well beforehand.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
More like app hatin', am I right? And app lovin' is a little bit of a confusing business on the surface. It basically helps mobile apps make money and get more users through these ads. It helps app developers earn money by placing ads inside their apps. And also, some of those apps bring in new users for apps as well.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
So it's a lot of these mobile gaming ads that, I don't know, if you play Candy Crush or something like that, you might see a banner ad pop up. It's stuff like that. It's a big industry. I mean, this stock has been the apple of Wall Street's eye for a long time now, which is why we're talking about it.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Because when you see multiple short seller reports come out like this and the stock kind of react pretty violently to it, you do want to talk about it. The idea behind these Fuzzy Panda and Culper Research reports is that they've been misrepresenting the benefits of its AI advertising platform.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Again, they are saying that they're force-feeding app installations and passing it off as if their new Axon platform is driving increased revenue. And that is a real problem because AI is the thing that's been the rocket fuel to this stock's rise. And if you are misrepresenting exactly what that AI is capable of, then of course you're going to see its valuation take a hit.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
I So I found this list very fascinating. Most of the animals presented in this study that pose the biggest threats are carriers of disease or parasites. Think blood flukes. Think mosquitoes. With the exception of the Russell's viper. So, of course, I had to look this thing up. This is a snake. Very scary. Mostly found in India, Southeast Asia, parts of China.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And one thing I will say is analysts have pushed back calling some of these short reports misguided. They are saying if Apple Oven is actually committing fraud, The argument is why haven't they faced legal challenges from competitors like Meta? Why haven't they faced legal challenges from things like former employees? Usually they would be onto it and very incentivized to call it out.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
And then they also point to the fact that no legal authorities have been really sniffing around. There's no active investigations against Applovin. So Wedbush maintained their outperform rating. They maintained their price target for shares of Applovin. So you were seeing a little bit of pushback from some of the analysts that do cover this stock. That being said,
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Maybe where there is smoke, there is fire. So I think the only thing left to do is just wait and see to see if some of those lawsuits materialize, if Meta does come sniffing around, and if there is something nefarious going on under the hood here. Up next, it is Thursday, which means it's time for Neal's Numbers.
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Nvidia Calms DeepSeek Nerves & Amazon Juices Alexa With AI
Virgin Voyages has won accolades for dang near everything. Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast just voted them the world's best cruise for the second year in a row. Their food menus are award-winning too, not too surprising considering they were created by Michelin star chefs.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But then two, they're promising more innovation down the pipeline. They also have been rolling out their VW branded spice ketchup. They sold a few bottles. in the U.S. last year, but I think they're going to expand the reach of that. So pairing some VW currywurst with some VW spiced ketchup, I think that's going to hit hard at a summer barbecue.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Same goes, the smaller your pool is, the less risky you should be. You don't need to send McNeese to the Final Four if there's only 20 people in your office pool, so... Those are my three tips. Take them or leave them. Do with what you will, but good luck on March Madness. Now a word from our sponsor, Sophos.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I had no idea Frenchies were so popular. That being said, their popularity is actually...
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Ben, the Fed didn't rock the boat at its meeting yesterday, keeping interest rates steady as they go. It's Thursday, March 20th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
waning there's been less sold year over year over year for the past three years i do think the kennel club said like hey this is a voluntary registration process so the amount of frenchies out there still might be doing just fine but i can't believe how far ahead of the lab it was if you had asked me before seeing this list like what is the most popular dog i definitely would have gone with a golden retriever or a lab like that but they logged just 58 000 new registrations last year there were nearly 74 000 frenchies logged so it's just leaps and bounds ahead of its next closest competitor
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
They look so good on an Instagram reel. They are... funny they're very low maintenance too well some of them are it depends on which you know dog you have but they don't require a ton of exercise they don't shed that much and obviously they're very inscrammable all of those three things combined to make this one of the you know the most popular dog in the in the US the past year
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
This guy is a legend, Neil. His nickname is Aura, and I think it fits him perfectly. His McNeese State bio says, if they kept manager stats for rebounding and wiping up wet spots, I'd put up Wilt Chamberlain numbers. How about this, too? His deals are actually performance-based. So for every NCAA tournament game that McNeese wins, his paycheck goes up.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So the man literally has win bonuses like a player does. So he's just an absolute legend, and I do think it is the future right now. I mean, Jack Golke's the perfect emblematic of it that a lot of people probably don't even remember what he looks like at the time. But during March Madness, he was signing deal after deal after deal. He signed with Buffalo Wild Wings as well.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So you're seeing these unspoken agreement that the brands know that this is five minutes of fame. The person knows it's five minutes of fame, but might as well cash in on it while the attention is there.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
as the men's tournament for March Madness tips off today you may still be looking at an empty bracket with no real concept on how to fill it out is it Duke's year is the SEC that good the questions overwhelm your underdeveloped college basketball mind so you turn to a familiar companion for some guidance AI.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But it may not be as adept at winning your office bracket pool as it is at revising emails for you. An Axios reporter put some of the major AI chatbots out there to test to see if they could fill out a winning bracket, but most couldn't even fill out a legal one. Google's Gemini 2.0 Flash picked the first round games well enough, but created impossible second round matchups.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Anthropix Claude did great into the Final Four where it hallucinated the semifinal games. ChatGBT actually got a bracket fully filled out on its first try, but picked every single favorite along the way. Still, some people within the AI industry are bullish that AI is ready to cut down the nets.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But trade-offs are an unfortunate part of cybersecurity too, leaving businesses picking between complicated programs you can't figure out, or easy systems that don't protect you.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
One CEO is running a $1 million March Madness bracket challenge that claims his AI can outperform one of the nation's top sports gamblers. We're not a crystal ball, says Alan Levy, the head of 4C Predictions, who is running this challenge, but it's going to start to get very, very creepy. Who is the AI backing Houston to win it all, says Levy, while Sean Perry, the gambler, is going with Duke.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Neil, how long until our March Madness pools are just... AIs picking against other AIs.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Or just do individual matchups. Just say, look at all the data and tell me who is going to win.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I know, but this is work. I mean, let's be honest. We're all taking a little bit of a half day today. But I do think also March Madness has always been kind of this proving ground and coming out party for a lot of tech. I mean, probably the biggest one that comes to mind is streaming.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
March Madness, with its crazy amount of games, was great for kind of ushering in and being a testing ground for the streaming era. And this year, AI companies are kind of capitalizing in as well. OpenAI has actually said, like, hey, use us to try to fill out your bracket. And then Perplexity is incorporating odds from the prediction market, Kalshi, and its platform.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So they're definitely leaning in this year because you're right, a lot of people are probably staring at a bracket and going, I don't know how to even, who's make me state? I do think, though, that the true AI that we should all rely on is just that corgi on social media that hits the ball with his nose into one basket or the other.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I trust that, Corgi, more than I trust ChatGPT or anything else out there.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Plus, they provide 500-plus cybersecurity experts ready to tackle threats before they even start, while Sophos Central lets you manage everything effortlessly, integrating with hundreds of your favorite security tools. You can have your cybersecurity cake and eat it, too.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I want you to share the podcast with someone who didn't pick Duke to win this year. There's not a lot of you out there, but I could see maybe a Florida or an Auburn fan sneaking in there. Heck, maybe even Gonzaga for all the true ball knowers.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
The Federal Reserve has gone all noble gas on us because it refuses to react to anything. Jerome Powell and the Fed decided to keep interest rates steady at a range of 4.25% to 4.5% during its latest meeting. taking a cautious approach to an economy in a delicate spot. Powell said, we're paying close attention to risks on both sides, keeping inflation under control while supporting jobs.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
In other words, he's trying to strike a balance between fighting inflation and not slowing down the economy's role too much. As for the year ahead, the Fed hinted that they might cut rates twice more, though Powell admitted the outlook is more uncertain now.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Just 11 out of 19 Fed officials anticipate those two rate cuts, which is a slimmer margin compared to the 15 policymakers who had projected the same back in December. The market loved the sound of two more rate cuts on the horizon and turned green during Powell's press conference.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
In less good news, officials said they're expecting inflation to rise this year to 2.7%, up from the 2.5% they projected in January, with, quote, a good part of that coming from tariffs, according to Powell. Fed officials also said they expect GDP growth of just 1.7%, down from their December projections of 2.1%.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
With all that uncertainty looming on the horizon, Neil, it makes sense that the Fed kept the ship steady in this latest meeting.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Yeah, just some more economic data to paint a fuller picture of just the uncertainty gripping the economy right now. Spending has slowed, but hiring has held relatively steady. The unemployment rate stood at 4.1% in February. That's still historically low. Consumer sentiment, on the other hand, that has taken a bit of a beating. In February, it fell the most in four or five years or so.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But the economy is still pretty good. Employment is holding up. There's been an injection of uncertainty, but Powell said that he was asked— his press conference yesterday, like, do you think a recession is coming? And he says, well, first of all, we don't make proclamations on if we think a recession is coming.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But looking at what forecasters have said, those forecasters haven't moved up their projection of a recession to a much higher level. So he says that the chance of a severe economic downturn is not likely. So again, he was kind of cooling tempers of a massive drop off in the economy because he still thinks the fundamentals are there for a pretty strong economy.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
And I would circle May 7th, though, on your calendar. That is the next time the Fed meets. All the April data, all the tariffs that are set to kick in will be illuminated in May. So that is going to be a tone center and an important one for how these policies are actually affecting the economy, because we're still kind of in the early days of some of these more disruptive economic policies.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
It's getting healthier. It is about the journey. It's not about the destination. Because the Financial Times talked to some people familiar with X's finances, and they said that, yeah, this is Elon Musk's cost-cutting plan and action. The company is a lot healthier with a lot smaller workforce. It's a lot more efficient.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
But then another person they talked to said that the EBITDA figure was, quote, wildly adjusted. So there's probably two sides of this coin. Maybe the $1.2 billion figure that you mentioned isn't as legit as you might say it is, according to some people familiar with the situation. But the move has definitely improved. Part of the reason is that Elon Musk gave a 25% stake in XAI.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
to investors of the social media company last year. So that has kind of attracted this higher valuation when you have this AI portion attached to it. But then advertisers are coming back as well. I mean, Amazon has started boosting marketing spend recently. You have seen a lot of these advertisers come back as... Elon has deepened his relationship with the current administration as well.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So I do think there's a lot of signs of positivity, even if maybe that $44 billion figure is more symbolic because it is dead on exactly what Elon paid.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Yeah, and I do think one ace in the hole is that they have XAI, which obviously has a chatbot in Grok, but also they think that they can use that technology to boost its ads offering. So I think even though there is this vision for this everything app, they want to spend a lot of time pushing their...
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
subscription product, I do think maybe ads on X will become a thing again if you can kind of use your A to build a better platform than it existed in the past. Ben and Jerry's and Unilever are looking like they're on a rocky road after the ice cream brand accused its parent company of firing its CEO for refusing to, quote, oversee the dismantling of its progressive values.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Unilever told Ben & Jerry's board earlier in March that it was planning to remove David Stever, who led the company for nearly two years. And it's Ben & Jerry's contention that it was because Stever allowed the ice cream maker to speak out on certain political issues.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
To Ben & Jerry's, that seemed like a half-baked plan since it went against an agreement signed when the companies merged all the way back in 2000 to set up an independent board meant to protect the ice cream brand's mission.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
The whole thing stinks like fish food, too, because according to the chair of its independent board, Ben & Jerry's has, quote, delivered strong financial results, far outpacing the rest of Unilever's ice cream business. Zoom out, and this has been a far from happy pairing since their 2000 merger.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Ooh, I hope I live up to that lofty billing. Okay, a few tips for you guys. Avoid high-altitude teams in the tournament. Usually those schools enter with a bit of an inflated record since their home court advantage during the regular season is so outside. So that means fading teams like BYU, Utah State, Colorado State, and New Mexico.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
In 2021, tensions rose after Ben & Jerry's announced it would stop selling its product in the West Bank. And in November, Ben and Jerry sued Unilever, accusing it of silencing its statements in support of Palestinians. So this latest escalation of the suit is the Cherry Garcia on top of a tumultuous relationship between the two companies.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I mean, you said buyer's remorse, but it's not necessarily on Unilever's side because Ben & Jerry's has performed incredibly well within their portfolio because in 2024, according to Unilever's own presentation on its financial performance, Ben & Jerry's grew faster than most of its ice cream brands, including its Magnum brand, which is another one of its high-end ice cream products.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
So financially, this deal has gone very well, but socially and politically, they're clashing a little bit.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
A lot of it, yeah. And I will say, too, it's not like Unilever is in a great spot either. They just fired its own CEO last month and replaced him to speed up this turnaround process that they've been doing. I do think this move to spin off its ice cream business, I don't know.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
I don't know if it's going to save the company, but at least it's going to provide some clarity on the direction of what this giant CPG is actually doing. So potentially this unhappy marriage could be, you know, annulled by the end of the year if Ben and Jerry's is spun off in that Amsterdam listing, as you mentioned. Up next, oh boy, we made it. It is time for Neil's Numbers.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
If you want a sneak peek, here's one of the questions right from the quiz. Which of the following is not a major index? A. Nifty 50 B. S&P 500 C. DKXI 40 or D. Nikkei 225
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
The other metric I'm looking at this year is the so-called kill shot metric created by Evan Miyakawa. A kill shot is when a team goes on a 10-0 or better point run. Teams that have this ability to get really hot tend to perform better in March. Finally, be mindful of your pool size. The more people in your pool, the riskier you should be.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Designed with sellers in mind, Walmart Marketplace is a fast-growing e-commerce platform that's designed to make selling simple. You pay zero setup, monthly, or closing fees, and Walmart's competitive commission in fulfillment fees can help create better margins for your bottom line.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
Head to marketplace.walmart.com slash MBD to get started. That's marketplace.walmart.com slash MBD.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & 'X' Worth $44B Again?
It's so emblematic of, or the same oil for that matter. It's so emblematic of everything that's going on in VW right now that their sausages are outperforming their cars. First, I have two things to say about this. One, I encourage you to go look it up because they look very delicious, especially a nice little sear on the outside. So that is delicious.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And by party, I mean tell you about today's sponsor, which is LinkedIn Ads. Neil and I were golfing the other day. Yes, in February. And we saw this guy on the range.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Yeah, this is the transparency side of Doge that they invited when they put this website up. If you want to show the work, people are going to start parsing through that work. You could credit Doge and say, wait a second, they actually found a government contract that was mislabeled, that was soon changed right before the inauguration.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
What is clear, though, that $8 billion is certainly not even close to what this contract could possibly be worth. Also, $8 million is the upper bound on what you could hypothetically say you saved as well because $2.5 million has already been spent on that $8 million contract.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So it just shows that when you're going line by line and trying to cancel and add up these savings, you're going to run into some of these hurdles. Maybe it's a mislabeled contract. Maybe it is just an over-exaggeration. But I do think that... They thought they found the perfect doge fodder here. And if you dig a little deeper, it wasn't the perfect doge fodder.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Yeah, this is an interesting industry. One, because fire truck manufacturing is an incredibly bespoke process. Every single fire department wants their truck made to their specific specifications. And so, therefore, it's not something that you can just mass produce like a normal automobile. Also, it is a very consolidated industry. If you look at the top name there, it's called Rev Group.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It controls 30% of the fire market, but then you go down the list, and three of the largest companies control about 70% to 80% of the market. If you dig into those companies' financials, they have backlogs stretching years and billions of dollars of orders, but there's just not a ton of rush to fulfill those orders because, again, it's not a very competitive marketplace. So,
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
A lot of these fire stations are looking around and they're making do with what they have. They're making do with 30-year-old fire trucks. They're throwing birthdays for these fire trucks because they are forced to because no new fire trucks are coming to replace their old ones.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
This is a culmination of a trend that has really emerged over the past decade. If you go back to 2012, seven of the top 10 releases in China were from Hollywood, were from American studios. But then you go back to last year, no American movie broke the list of the top 10 highest grossing movies in China. And it really just speaks to the emergence of China's movie-making machine.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
They are, one, improving in quality, and two, showing that It reflects wider societal issues as well. This is a movie that is based on a 16th century story from a Chinese culture. And so audiences, domestic audiences are showing out in droves. One, just showing their national support for stories like this.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And then two, just showing that these movies are good movies and they do draw in audiences in droves at this point. It's coming to America, too. You looked at the Showtime to see it. It's pretty widely distributed within New York City, so we should give that a try.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
You are seeing a widening gap between the U.S. and Ukraine. Obviously, the U.S. has been a huge backer of Ukraine's efforts against Russia, but Trump has said on the campaign trail and since he's taken office that he quickly wants to settle this war, but he's taken a turn to increasingly blaming Ukraine Ukraine and Zelensky personally, and spoken with Putin about ways to end it.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So we've entered into this balancing act where Zelensky does want to push back against these claims thrown his way without bad-mouthing its biggest backer while also trying to end the war. So it's a very precarious situation. While Apple was busy announcing a cheaper iPhone, Microsoft was cooking up an entirely new state of matter.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Man, I am still mad at that dude for ruining a lovely February round. If you're interested in testing out LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn will give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It unveiled a quantum computing chip yesterday that it says is powered by eight topological qubits, an exotic form of matter that is not based on a solid liquid or gas. The idea is for this new phase of physical existence to be harnessed to solve mathematical and scientific problems, eventually bringing quantum computing into the mainstream.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
This marks two big quantum breakthroughs in just a few months. In December, Google unveiled its own quantum computer that needed just a few minutes to solve a calculation that would take most supercomputers 10 septillion years to finish. And many believe that Microsoft's new technology could leapfrog that chip. Neil, now many believe that instead of Decades.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It could just be years until we get viable commercial applications of quantum computing.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
If all 76 passengers on that Delta flight took up its offer, it would cost Delta $2.3 million in total, which feels small for how large that accident was. But you're right. When you compare it to the Alaska Airlines flight, it is substantially more. I also went back and looked at, remember the miracle on the Hudson flight in 2009? Those passengers got flabbergasted. $5,000.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
I mean, I guess that's not inflation adjusted, but that was $5,000 going towards replacing possessions lost, not necessarily as an act of goodwill. So in the grand scheme of things, $30,000 is a lot of money, but also I'm not sure if it's enough for given what those passengers went through.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
The SS United States, once a grand symbol of American maritime engineering, is making its way beneath the sky blue waters off the Gulf Coast of Florida. No, it didn't run aground on some reef. In fact, the ocean liner is set to become a reef itself. A $10 million project aims to create a new habitat for marine life by sinking the ship while also hoping to boost tourism and fishing in the process.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
The transformation from a 990 foot long mid 20th century Marvel that carried four presidents across the Atlantic into an environmentally sound reef will take about two years and will include the removal of hazardous materials like fuel still sitting in its tanks. But it will give second life to the once proud ship that to this day is the largest passenger ship ever built in America.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
I was going to guess super ship, so I thought that was a dumb guess.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
If you've been here for two years now, first, thank you, but you've probably told all of your immediate friends about your favorite morning show. So let's dig deep here. Hit up your exes, text your third cousins twice removed, and knock on your technologically illiterate 70-year-old neighbor's door. Bottom of the barrel stuff, but thank you for your loyalty.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
This has a long way to go before we have an outcome on either side, but let's dive deeper into the numbers on if it was working or not. In the first week of February, traffic inside the toll zone dropped about 10% compared to the same time last year. There was, on average, about 50,000 less vehicles entering, according to the MTA, so that is a big check in its corner. Also, foot traffic, which is
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
is a good measure that businesses want to see to make sure that they're still getting enough people to come frequent their shops. That has improved since the tolls took effect as well. Through the end of January, 35.8 million pedestrians entered that major business district in the tolling zone. That's about 5% more than the same period last year.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And it's been really freaking cold in New York City too. So those are impacting numbers as well. But On the flip side, this toll had a lot of powerful opponents. One of them is actually the governor of New Jersey. He said, you're basically just rerouting traffic into our neck of the woods. That traffic has to go somewhere. You're just putting it on our plate. So he has the ear of Trump as well.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
A lot of powerful people in New Jersey were not happy with this, which is why Trump kind of made it a campaign promise. This is him trying to execute on that campaign promise.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Then Apple added a new cheap iPhone to its lineup, but it's what's under the hood that has investors excited. It's Thursday, February 20th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
One real issue with this, though, is that this plan was supposed to, if congestion pricing goes away, it will really hurt the MTA because they were expecting $1 billion in extra revenue. They were going to use it to fund all these improvements to the subway system. And they've already started borrowing against future toll revenue. So if that gets taken away, it really throws the MTA into limbo.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It really puts their plans on, you know, giving a facelift to one of the most extensive transportation systems in a U.S. city, but also an aging transportation system. So I do think that they are watching nervously and saying, oh, no, we've already started cashing checks from this program. What happens if that income stream is taken away?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Apple rolled out a budget-friendly new face to its lineup yesterday, the $599 iPhone 16E. It clocks in at $600 cheaper than Apple's most souped-up iPhone, but will run you $170 more than the iPhone SE it is replacing. What's the extra cash getting you? say goodbye to the old home button that somehow your mom's phone still has, and say hello to Face ID.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It also contains the same A18 chip as the iPhone 16, which is powerful enough to run Apple Intelligence. And there's an updated USB-C charging port. But what has a lot of people excited is a small piece of tech under the hood.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Inside the 16E is Apple's first ever in-house cellular chip, which represents the culmination of a years-long effort by Apple to make more of its technology itself to save having to pay billions of dollars to suppliers like Qualcomm. This launch also signals Apple's intention to push into the lower end of the smartphone market, typically dominated by rivals like Google and Samsung.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So Neil, one little phone here, but a lot of implications.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
But let's talk about this in-house modem. This is sort of a test run for these chips that allow your phone to connect to cellular providers around the world. What they're doing is trying it out in this cheaper iPhone to see if they can roll it out to their entire suite. And the reason why they've been trying to do this is that
Morning Brew Daily
Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Apple's been very reliant on Qualcomm for most of its history, but Qualcomm charges them, one, money to make the chips, but then also, two, they have to pay a royalty of like $6 to $7 on every single iPhone that contains the chip. So over 230 million iPhones, that is billions of dollars we're talking about.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So Apple has been slowly chipping away at figuring out how to make this one critical component It's been a very long process. They hired a bunch of people from Intel's modem division. They hired some people from Qualcomm as well. It's a little contentious because they've been trying to keep Qualcomm happy while also trying to derive or take away a major source of revenue from it.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So this has been a project that's been ongoing. We've seen them do it with their actual chips that power the phone. Now they're trying to do it with their cellular chips as well.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
I mean, it's not necessarily that exciting of a project because it is just a more expensive entry-level version of their phone, and it doesn't come with a ton of bells and whistles. Most of the bells and whistles are actually stripped away, like you're not going to get those higher end features that you come to expect. It doesn't have the dynamic Island at the top.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It doesn't have the mag safe wireless charging. It only has one back camera. So if you make a big deal out of it, some people might say, wait, you're just releasing a less souped up iPhone. Why should I be excited about that?
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So I do think this, the reason why we're talking about it is because the modem and what it represents for Apple going forward, but a modem is not exciting for consumers, which is why they didn't make a huge deal about it. Nikola Motors, an electric truck company that once had a market cap higher than Ford, filed for bankruptcy yesterday, completing its slow downhill roll towards the EV junkyard.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
This company's worth eulogizing, though, not for its contributions to the EV industry, but for its insane backstory. Nikola was founded by Trevor Milton amidst the green auto investment boom that characterized the early part of the COVID pandemic.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
It promised semi-trucks that would run on environmentally friendly hydrogen and a network of fueling stations along major interstate corridors to keep everything moving. When it went public via SPAC, it reported orders for 14,000 of its hydrogen fuel cell trucks. However, the famed short seller Hindenburg soon took notice and released a report that Nikola was likely overhyping its business.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
The report also made the sensationalist claim that in some of its promotional videos, Nikola rolled a truck down a hill and passed it off as moving under its own volition, which prosecutors found to be true. Needless to say, instead of ushering in a green revolution in trucking, Trevor Milton was convicted of securities fraud in 2022 for allegedly misleading investors.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
And Nikola is now a poster child for mean stock froth and founder megalomania. What a downfall, Neil.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Yeah, there was almost two factors that sunk Nikola. One was Trevor Milton was literally defrauding investors by... I remember when this happened, when their video of this truck steaming down the highway, Hindenburg kind of said, we found out that they can't actually drive these trucks. These trucks don't work. They are literally using gravity and passing it off as self-powered trucks. So that...
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
was this whole separate issue. But then there's also just normal startup problems. They are saying its current CEO cited the fact that it's really hard to find hydrogen fuel cell parts because it's just not a big market. And they should have thought about that. I know, but I think these are things that they thought they could just build or the industry would grow alongside.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
So yeah, some of it was just a miscalculation of that. All told, though, this was a money lighting on fire machine. It's lost $3.6 billion. billion in capital. It's just been literally setting money on fire, and it joins that graveyard.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
I mean, the Fisker Motors of the world, the Lordstown Motors of the world, these companies that thought they were going to be Tesla and instead are just a cautionary tale.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Up next, hold on to your frontal lobes. It's Neil's numbers. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase. You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Time flies when you're saying let's ride. I will spare you all my rendition of happy birthday. Instead, just pass along how thankful Neil and I and the whole team is for you guys. From the literal day one-ers who comment on every YouTube video to our brand new listeners, you all are what make MBD MBD. Now let's go and party.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees. To get started, head to the Wallet app on your iPhone where you can apply in minutes and start using your Apple Card right away to watch that daily cash roll in. Let's ride.
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Apple Unveils Budget-Friendly iPhone & Congestion Pricing Gets Axed?
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
That is true, especially with daylight saving. I do think, too, though, that the big takeaway from this report is that overall productivity increased by 2% over that time as well. So people are clocking out earlier, but getting more done. The report highlighted that employees engage in focused 24-minute spurts of productivity, which I think we can all kind of relate to.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And there's this guy, Kevin Schmidt, who climbs a 1,500-foot TV tower twice a year to change the light bulb. He makes $20,000 per climb. Yes, he's got the risk of death. Vanna has a lot less so, but I think it's a toss-up on the literal dollars per minute worked. So Kevin Schmidt, Vanna White, those two are on the Mount Rushmore of dollars per minute worked.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
That's like the length of our podcast. Right. It is, yeah, a focus burst of productivity right here. But I do think it's right. People aren't meant to just be locked in, you know, eight hours a day, 10 hours a day, all the way straight through. You ebb and flow, you ease in and out of productivity.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So these little spurts of productivity are, I think, a good thing because we are seeing that productivity number go up overall, even though minutes worked is going down.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Yeah, that seems to be the rallying cry right now for sure. This Wall Street Journal documented the poor story of a guy who owned an electric car. First of all, he tried to turn his car on from inside the house, but the app wasn't working. It was a cold day. So he went outside to try to do it manually. Then the door handle was broken because it was too cold.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So it is just this ridiculous thing where we innovated door handles to the point where they were obviously a problem-free experience. Everyone knew that a door handle just worked as a door handle. Suddenly we put too many sensors in them. They pop out when you approach a vehicle. And we created a problem where there wasn't one.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So that is just perfectly emblematic of the fact that cars are turning into a computer. I mean, we just heard Trump say everything is computer when he stepped inside a Tesla. And it is emblematic of what's happening of the entire auto industry right now, specifically with door handles.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil, when was the last time you checked your resting heart rate? Tell me, why on earth would I ever know that? Hey, it's important to know the state of your aerobic system. But the reason I ask is because you've been spending a little too much time in your brokerage account.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
It is a really long conveyor belt. It's also a very risky investment because this thing costs $400 million to make. And it's obviously one of those things that there's not a lot of precedent about how to make a conveyor belt that stretches that many miles. But it does seem like it is helping with the traffic issue. That was the big thing.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
They didn't want these huge, laid-down trucks on highways that... are just kind of a danger to everyone else along the highway. But the ironic thing is that during its miles long journey, the sand is actually sold and then sent to fracking companies. How do they do that sort of last mile delivery? They load it onto trucks and, you know, deliver it to the fracking company.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So it is a bit ironic that they created this huge $400 million thing only to still load it up in trucks to send it the last mile. But it does, you know, save some of those traffic issues. And I said, yeah.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
I just want one person to, you know, maybe it's a YouTuber, to get on it and make the whole trip and just tell me what it's like to be on a 61 or 41 mile conveyor belt.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
It is on, and it's also a replay of the last time Trump was in office when Trump imposed tariffs on the EU during his first term. What did they do? They targeted the same iconic American industries and companies like bourbon from Kentucky, like Harvey Davidson motorcycles, and like Levi's jeans.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So you are seeing it run literally the same playbook back, targeting these things that are very emblematic of America, even if they maybe are not super crucial to the economy at large.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Someone call Will Smith because iRobot is tanking. Shares of the Roomba maker fell more than 30% yesterday after the company said there is, quote, substantial doubt about its ability to stay in business. Since Amazon pulled out of its plans to buy the company for $1.7 billion last year, things have gone from bad to worse. The company laid off 51% of its staff at the end of 2023.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
and its financial outlook has gotten snagged on a sock, with fourth quarter revenue falling 44% year over year. Still, it's throwing Hail Marys to stay in the game. On Tuesday, the company launched eight new Roombas, though it said in a statement that there can be no assurance that the new products launched will be successful. Neil, can you imagine a world without Roombas?
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
I get that, but you don't need to be constantly checking in looking for the next big thing because Invesco QQQ is already packed full of the most innovative companies. But isn't it a little tech heavy? That's the beauty. It's not just a tech ETF. You are also getting exposure to healthcare, industrials, communication services.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Now, I have to say it. I got to see these single crotch stitches. Have I been walking around with non-aerodynamic crotchal regions all these years? Think of all the wind resistance that I could have been avoiding. I do feel bad for the athletes, though, who apparently didn't know anything about the modified suits. But I do love me a little deflate gaze-esque drama hitting the ski jumping world.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
I never knew a single stitch in one particular region of the body could increase aerodynamics that much.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
I want you to share the podcast with someone who didn't know we had a YouTube channel. It's a lot of you. Over 10 times as many people listen to MBD as watch it. But come check out our smiling faces. Maybe leave a comment, perhaps even a like and subscribe. We'll see you there.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
New inflation numbers dropped yesterday, and for the first time in months, lead-foot prices actually eased off the accelerator. Woo-hoo! Party in the streets! Well, not quite. The Consumer Price Index rose just 0.2% in February, the slowest pace since October.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
That brought annual inflation down to 2.8%, better than expected, thanks to falling gas prices, cheaper housing, and airfare taking a 4% nosedive. Even egg prices, which have been on a rampage, climbed less than last month, though they're still up nearly 60% from a year ago. Before you break out the margaritas, economists are bracing for higher prices in the future.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
President Trump's tariffs on steel, aluminum, and a fresh round of Chinese goods are expected to push up prices on everything from clothing to food to cars. So while the White House is holding this inflation report up as proof the economy is on track, Wall Street wasn't as convinced. Stocks rallied briefly on the news before wiping out those gains just hours later and finishing the day about flat.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is likely still in wait-and-see mode, looking for more clarity on Trump's trade actions. And this report likely won't sway it away from its plan to hold interest rates steady when policymakers meet next week. Bottom line, Neil, inflation may have cooled for now, but with tariffs heating up, this could be the calm before the $20 egg storm.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Just diving into some of the specific categories, nearly half of the advance of the overall CPI was due to shelter costs. But those costs actually still decelerated from the prior month, so they did go up a little bit less quickly. Airfares falling 4% was actually a big reason why this inflation report came in a little less hot.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And that's because a lot of carriers, as we've spoken about, have faltered. forecasted weaker demand. Prices of new cars, gasoline also declined. Grocery prices were pretty unchanged, actually, after a big increase in January. So that's actually a good thing. Technically, they fell if you exclude eggs, which I think some people are probably doing at this point.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And yeah, so I do think that, as I said, the Federal Reserve probably is in wait-and-see mode. There's nothing much that this report can do that really will sway it one way or the other. They still need more data to come in, still need to see these inflation numbers milding out a little bit.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So what is the new nine to five? Then inflation finally slowed its roll last month, but danger lurks ahead. It's Thursday, March 13th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Right. Health advocates for years have been trying to get these things out of foods. They say, one, they add nothing to taste. They don't do anything to nutritional value. They don't affect shelf life. All they do is make unhealthy foods look more visually appealing, which encourages more people to buy them. And then, of course, there is some research that say they could be carcinogens as well.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And it does look like Kennedy isn't just stopping at artificial dyes. He wants to expand beyond that. He said that the agency is going to look at generally recognized as safe rules. Those are the rules that allow companies to basically self-affirm which food ingredients make it into their products. He says he wants to look at those and just –
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
basically take a step back and say, what is going into our food supply? California has long been a leader in this movement. They banned six food dyes from food served to children in public schools back in September. West Virginia has also been leading the charge. They advanced this big ban that targets a range of common food dyes that have been linked to health problems.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And that got overwhelming support from both Republicans and Democrats. It passed both legislative chambers and expected to make it to the governor's desk for signing soon. So there is a groundswell of support. for it.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
One way to get around it, though, is there is this healthy food movement that we're going through right now. And one thing that signals healthier foods is muted colors. So you're seeing brands like PepsiCo has been working to create a different type of spicy ruffles. They have this Simply brand where it's just a healthier brand in general.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
And so they are releasing this spicy chip, but it's a very muted color. So one that screams healthy colors. Two, you're getting around the artificial dye issue. So I think you may see some of these companies try to innovate their way out of it. Of course, the Flaming Hot... Change expectations. Right, change expectations. Like, this is a healthier snack.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
You're going to get some spice, but you're going to get a healthier snack. It might be tough, though, to... Like, Flaming Hot Cheetos... How are you? Skittles. Yeah, they have to be those bright colors. Like we were talking, can you imagine like a muted Skittle? It would just look like a breath mint at that point.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So some food innovation will certainly happen as companies try to get out of using dyes in their supply chain. Remember Pokemon Go, the game that had you sprinting into traffic for the chance to throw a virtual Pokeball at a Rattata? Well, it just got bought by a Saudi Arabian company. Scopely, a mobile gaming giant owned by Saudi Arabia's Savvy Games, just sold out $3.50
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
billion to snag Pokemon Go and a handful of other apps from the games maker Niantic. That means Charmander, Pikachu, and 100 million global players are officially in the Saudi portfolio. It's part of the country's massive gaming strategy, already holding stakes in Nintendo, EA, and Activision, and now adding Pokemon Go's billion-dollar empire to its trophy case.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Niantic, meanwhile, is pivoting to AI, spinning out its geospatial mapping unit to develop what it calls a next-gen map of the world, built using images and location data captured by its players.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
However, as 404 Media noted, Niantic and Scopely have published six collective blog posts about the deal, none of which address what is going to happen to the location data of players of Pokemon Go's 20 million weekly active users. So Neil, welcome to the new world of gaming where somehow Pikachu has found its way into the middle of a geopolitical rebrand and a data privacy debate.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
I mean, Pokemon Go, though, is still a massive name in the gaming space. It's one of the highest grossing mobile games today. It still has 30 million monthly payers. They spent more than $1 billion last year across its games business. It is definitely slightly smaller now. I still remember that crazy summer of 2015, 2016. I wish we were doing the podcast then.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
It was just a truly, I remember sprinting down to a beach because the rumor was a blast. It was down there. I couldn't believe it, but it did attract 500 million players in its first year. So it absolutely was a phenomenon. But you are right. The 2020 kind of hurt its popularity as COVID lockdowns kept people inside their homes. The company has since canceled multiple projects.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
It laid off 310 employees between 2022 and 2023 employees. And so you're right. Scopely was like, hey, we'll definitely take this. Scopely also has another huge moneymaker in the name of Monopoly Go. It sounds like all you have to do is take a nice IP and add Go to the end of it, and you'll make a billion dollars. That looks to be the strategy right now.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
So right now, Scopely is like, hey, we do want to get bigger in games. Let's take this limping title that still makes a lot of money, and let's try to take over the games world.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Got to warm those thumbs up, Neil. I'm going to make it to the Olympic Games in esports. All right, what a first half of the show. Let's wait for the second half where we get Neil's numbers.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Our queen, Vanna White, I think she's worth every penny. I mean, look at it. Wheel of Fortune generated $100 million in advertising revenue last year, so I think she's definitely worth it. but I was doing a little bit of digging to see who might have a better dollar per minute worked than Vanna White.
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Inflation Cools More Than Expected & 'Pokémon GO' Heads to Saudi Arabia
Virgin Voyages has won accolades for dang near everything. Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast just voted them the world's best cruise for the second year in a row. Their food menus are award-winning too, not too surprising considering they were created by Michelin star chefs. Have you seen their cabins?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
They've got the accolades, too. They were just voted the world's best cruise line by Travel and Leisure and Condé Nast readers for the second year in a row.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Whether it's a Valentine's Day date night or a solo self-care sesh, sometimes you just want to sip, savor, and unwind with something that isn't alcohol.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Or a headache the next morning.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
You've got two options with Delta, 5 milligrams for a light social buzz, or 20 milligrams when you're ready to full-on chill out. It's got a crisp, refreshing taste to complement whatever your evening entails.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Let's toss in Florida while they're at it. Now a quick word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, you ever get overwhelmed by all the paperwork involved in modern life?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Yeah, it is definitely marking a shift from what old television was to what new television is. YouTube CEO called out that it's not just people watching YouTube videos on their TV. They're also watching things like shorts. Yes, they're watching short-form content on their TVs. They're watching podcasts like Morning Brew Daily. Go onto YouTube, watch us right now.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
They're watching live streams alongside YouTube. traditional things like sports and the TV shows that they like to watch. So it is really becoming this all-in-one TV watching experience. It reminds me of our conversation we had about Spotify last weekend about how they've become this all-in-one audio app. It looks like YouTube is becoming this all-in-one TV app, which, you know what?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
People love it. It's got a great interface, got good content, and it looks like this is where the winds are blowing.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Neil, let's... When we get in front of a TV next, I'm going to fire up my old high school soccer highlights on TV.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Now imagine you're an international business owner. It's like a never-ending game of where's Waldo with all the fees and paperwork.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
it definitely does paper over some of the gaps that federal rebuilding costs and private insurers can't step in to meet. Although it does raise some questions about inequality as well, because people with wealthier social networks are definitely more apt to receive more support than people with not as wealthy social networks. So GoFundMe does know this though. And so it tries to
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
randomized which fundraisers appear on its website. They randomize which fundraisers pop up when you go to their California wildfire specific tab. So it has raised some questions around that, but in general, GoFundMe is just very well aware of this and said, we do not want it to be just the value of your social network.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
We just want it to be all of humanity can come and help and contribute to these wildfire funds.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
You can pay in 40-plus currencies with no surprise charges and no pointless paperwork. Save time, find Waldo, and use Wise. If you want a cleaner, simpler way to do business internationally, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business. Like the fringe guy at a house party, inflation is sticking around a lot longer than anyone wants.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
down in the 305 it certainly is this is an all-time neil's number and my mind immediately went to the agricultural specialists that have to check the bundles of flour for you know potentially harmful plant pests and foreign animal diseases that could be imported into the united states because invasive species are a big deal here they can cause up to 120 billion dollars in economic and environmental losses it
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
when you're factoring things like yield loss or loss of quality from certain harvests in the agricultural sector. So imagine being the flower inspector who has to come through and just, it is people who are doing this look for invasive animals.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So that was, I mean, that might not be the most romantic interpretation of this stat, but that was where my mind went is who's checking all these things for, you know, invasive bugs and stuff.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I mean, 90%, if you ask me how much of the flower that gets imported into the U.S. comes through one port, 90% would have been astronomically higher than I ever would have guessed.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And that call also came on the heels of the U.S. and Russia reaching a deal for the release of the wrongfully detained American teacher, Mark Fogel. In return, the U.S. released a Russian crypto hacker by the name of Alexander Vinik. So it is just emblematic of the cozying up of Vladimir Putin and Trump. most people probably expected.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So we're seeing potentially some progress being made on the war front, but also we are seeing more diplomatic agreements being struck between these two leaders as well. The New York Stock Exchange announced today that one of its electronic outposts, the NYSE Chicago, is reincorporating in Texas and will now go by NYSE Texas. It's a fit that makes a lot of sense.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
According to the NYSE, Texas has the largest number of listings on the exchange, worth more than $3.7 trillion in market cap. Wooing a NYSE outpost is all part of the state's plan to market itself as an alternative to Delaware as the legal home base for a lot of corporations. So far, it's been working.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Elon Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX have reincorporated in Texas last year, and Meta is reportedly thinking about doing the same. Neil, my question is, do you think that cowboy hats will class with Patagonia vests, or will it kind of just work?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Yesterday's CPI reading for January came in hotter than expected with prices jumping 0.5% from December pushing the annual inflation rate up to 3% from 2.9% last month. The Fed has been doing everything it can to try and guide that number closer to its 2% target, but inflation is ignoring all road signs and driving the wrong way down a one-way road.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Wow, talking neutrinos at 6 in the morning. The way that scientists found this is extremely interesting. They set up this thing called the Kilometer Cube Neutrino Telescope. It's under the water in the Mediterranean Sea. And basically, it has detectors that are actually just strings of light-catching orbs spaced out under the seabed. And it was only 10%.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
set up when these sensors started lighting up saying that they found something. So scientists were initially pretty skeptical. They're like, we haven't even finished building this thing and we're already picking this up. So they said they got pretty lucky. They actually didn't pick up the neutrino itself. They picked up a different subatomic particle known as a muon.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
muons are created when neutrinos bump into things like, you know, seawater or the rock bed. So this muon went through moving really fast. It left this trail of photons, you know, these light packets in the dark sea. And scientists like clasped their hands over their face and said, holy moly, we found something here. So it took them, this was actually found in 2023.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It took them a while to verify that they actually did see what they saw. But neutrinos, man, they are packing a punch and they're moving quick down under the ocean. For our final headline, I'd like to report a murder. Duolingo, the app that your linguistically inclined friends are more attached to than their partners, killed off Duo, its iconic owl mascot, this week.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It is with heavy hearts that we inform you that Duo, formerly known as the Duolingo owl, is dead, the app wrote in a statement. To be honest, he probably died waiting for you to do your lesson, but what do we know? The post went insanely viral on social media. As of yesterday, the statement announcing his death has 106 million views on X and has been shared over half a million times on Instagram.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Even Dua Lipa, whose similar sounding name to the language learning platform, has made her a target of desire for the owl in the past, reshared the post saying, till death duo part. As of yesterday, we do have an update. The brand posted a follow-up video with the owl getting hit by a Cybertruck. asking for any leads as to who the driver is.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So Neil, I ask you, have you been driving a Cybertruck recently?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
It was the sector's most watched by consumers that led the charge, with price rises from groceries to gasoline, offsetting declines in clothing and furniture. Egg prices especially need to slow their ovular role. The egg shortage caused by a bird flu outbreak has pushed prices up 15.2% over the past month and 53% since last year.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
You know what I think was the smartest thing they did is they dropped this statement after the Super Bowl. If you drop it before the Super Bowl, it gets lost in all the other advertising attention. I think waiting for that period when that marketing talk starts to calm down to be the only talk of the town was very smart. Interest has absolutely spiked. Go to the Google search trends over time.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Searches for Duolingo are skyrocketing right now.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Luckily, we don't have a mascot or else they'd be on the chopping block right now, Neil.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I want you to use this podcast episode to shoot your shot. It is one day till V-Day. So throw that Hail Mary, DM your crush a link to MVD and say something like inflation has me thinking about how our love also deserves a chance to grow. Something like that. Good luck out there.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
That contributed two-thirds of the total increase in grocery prices alone since December. Neil, that sound you're hearing is J-PAL and the Fed doing absolutely nothing, and you'll probably hear it for a while longer.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Due to stubborn prices, the market now expects the Fed to keep interest rates at their current levels until December, a huge shift from last year where traders penciled in four rate cuts in 2025. 30% believe there's a chance that there won't be any rate cut this year, up from 20% earlier this week. Needless to say, this was not a great inflation report.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Absolutely. And the kind of underlying outlook for the economy is also very uncertain due to a lot of these Trump era policies, tariffs, deportations, tax cuts, deregulation. All of those are expected to have some sort of economic impact, likely an inflationary impact.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
We already know that tariffs could increase the price of goods, but even stuff like deportations that may limit the labor supply at a time of pretty low historically on U.S. unemployment, which could put upward pressure on wages, which could put upward pressure on prices.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So that is kind of the fear alongside this inflation report is that we haven't even necessarily entered into these potentially inflationary policy period that it looks like we are heading towards.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Then inflation heated up in January, which cooled off the Fed's future rate cut plans. It's Thursday, February 13th. Let's ride.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Yeah, and I do just want to talk about eggs one more time. We've talked a lot about eggs, but I saw a few people yesterday because the market, when the inflation reading came out, took a little bit of a red turn.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Everyone's like, basically, you know, billions of dollars in equities are being destroyed because egg prices are too high right now because 15% was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in this report. But... The egg shock, whatever you want to call it, filters through to a lot of other items in the grocery store. Think stuff like baked goods that actually take eggs as an input.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
But there's also the substitution effect. So when you see eggs going up in price, you might opt for another source of protein like beef or chicken. But then you see those prices going up as well. So even though it is just one little source of white or sometimes brown protein, it does filter through a lot of other parts of the economy and other parts of especially the grocery store.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
That was a pretty good pronunciation of all those Lord of the Rings names, I have to say, Neil. But yes, this is kind of a relief for the army and honestly a relief for Microsoft because this project really went south for them. $22 billion deal for Microsoft to develop these things. So it was this pretty big outlay. I mean, defense contracts are big in general, but this was a pretty big outlay.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
And it just went so poorly for them because in 2022, there was this leak that reports were coming out of soldiers wearing these HoloLenses that Microsoft developed, but they were affecting their mission. They were visual impairments. People were reporting headaches, eye strain, nausea. People were throwing up after wearing them.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So Army officials were already very skeptical that we needed to put $22 billion into these futuristic headsets. So that was just almost the nail in the coffin. But now the contract has transitioned into Andrew Hill, and it's very emblematic of where we are seeing the new guard emerge when it comes to defense contractors. Palantir, Andrew Hill, two of the largest tech forward U.S.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
technology companies. They've been trying to rally together and bid for more of those contracts that the U.S. government hands out. Usually they move to prime contractors like Lockheed Martin or Boeing, these legacy makers. They're trying to disrupt that and be this new wave of U.S. tech forward defense startups.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Olipop is popping off. The prebiotic soda startup that's high in fiber and low in sugar raised $50 million at a $1.85 billion valuation yesterday, showing it is a force to be reckoned with in the soda space.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Olipop has ridden cute branding, viral marketing, and a legion of dedicated fans to just short of $500 million in sales last year, elbowing its way into the legacy soda conversation in the process. Functional beverages, a category of non-alcoholic drinks that come with specific health benefits beyond just hydration, are no longer something that just almond moms are pushing.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Instead, they have become ubiquitous on grocery store shelves. Olipop is sold in nearly 50,000 retail locations across the U.S., including heavy hitters like Walmart and Whole Foods. But Olipop is hardly alone in this niche. Competitors like Culture Pop and Poppy both command their own cult followings, with Poppy reporting over half a billion dollars in sales last year alone.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Olipop is the top non-alcoholic beverage brand in the U.S. by both dollar sales and unit growth, according to data from Cercana. This company is profitable and It's growing, and now it's got a lot of extra cash to play.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Right. It definitely has. And I think it shows that this is clearly, you know, they think it's a gold rush for this consumer because right now they are very popular. These sort of modern sodas are very popular with Gen Zs. One in four Gen Z consumers drinks Olipop, according to the company. But they're also, you know, what is up for grads right now is both...
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I was just thinking California could use a little more Hygge in their life. But seriously, Neil, think of all the cross-cultural combinations that could occur. A California burrito with traditional curd herrings in it instead of french fries. A California club on s'more broad instead of multigrain. The possibilities are endless and honestly very hard to pronounce as well. Why stop there though?
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
non-soda drinkers, people who have never really drank legacy brands in their life, but also legacy soda drinkers are making the transition over to these drinks. So it is this very fertile industry right now that a lot of people are trying to capitalize on.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
So of course, you're going to see this knockdown, drag out fight over two very similarly positioned brands in the TikTok comments section, on X and social media. So it has been interesting to see how it's gotten almost a little nasty at this point. These two very Gen Z, very lighthearted brands are now duking it out in the TikTok.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
I mean, I think people probably made too big a deal out of it, mainly because of what Olipop said. They started this rumor that they cost $25,000. They didn't cost $25,000. What sort of vending machine costs the same as a Honda Accord? So they literally were essentially spreading misinformation, and it just got taken up by this sort of sector of the online audience.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Poppy's CEO actually recorded this video pretty exasperated, saying, like, no, these vending machines didn't cost that much. It was just a fun influencer package. So I think it got blown up bigger, and I was of the position that it would be super cool to have a vending machine in my house. Because even after all the poppy is done, you load that thing up with whatever you want.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
People coming in and vending their own drinks in your house. So I was team vending machine in this specific feud. Up next, prepare your mind for another edition of Neil's Numbers.
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Anduril Scores $22B US Army Contract & Inflation Sours Rate Cut Hopes
Yeah, that does not sound like your average cruise experience. Plus, everything is catered to adults on these kid free cruises, whether it's the entertainment parties or relaxing spaces throughout the ship.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
We got to update the console because everyone's just leaving them behind. And then also, here's one for you astrology lovers out there. During Mercury's April 2024 retrograde, lost items did spike. Over 7,000 riders lost items on April 5th alone. So if you're an astrology believer, look no further than Uber's lost and found report to justify your bullies. Now a word from our sponsor, TaxAct.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Well, tomato, potato. But for the longest time, I thought normal meant paying a fortune on my monthly data plan. That was until I heard about Mint Mobile and their premium wireless plans that start at just 15 bucks a month. For $15, you get Mint's high-speed data and unlimited talking text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
That means your group chat is never deprived of your sparkling wit.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So no matter how you say it, don't overpay it when it comes to data.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
I mean, the headline here is great. Like Japan builds a 3D station in just six hours before the next train comes. It's probably more of a shelter than an actual station. This thing is not a big building by any means, but also you don't need a big building to serve a relatively sparsely populated rail line. And it is plugging in a big need that Japan has right now.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
We've talked a lot about how Japan has this aging population. Their workforce is shrinking. So a lot of it becomes harder to maintain railway infrastructure when you just don't have a worker. So if you can figure out a way to make these improvements quicker and with less manpower, then even if it does look like a shelter, they're going to start pursuing this. So it is cool.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
But I just caution the word of a hut.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Neil, can I ask a dumb question? You've never let that stop you before. Fire away. Am I allowed to do my taxes at night?
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It is an astonishing amount. I don't know about you, Neil, but I'm two bottle caps worth of plastic in this old noggin. You might have five, but I'm rocking it too. But one of the big findings from this study was that these fragments, these plastic that make it into your brain are so, so small, no more than 200 nanometers long, which is 400 times less than the width of a human hair.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So a lot of times you think about fresh plastic entering your body, which is like, if you have a plastic cutting board, these big shards might come off if you're drinking from a water bottle. But those plastic pieces that are coming off, I say pieces, but they are still very small, are still way too big to pass through the blood barrier of your brain.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
But these 200 nanometer long ones, they can get in much easier. They also are usually older plastics that have been eroded over time from, you know, like the 60s, 70s and 80s.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Yeah, polyethylene, which kind of came around in the 60s. And so you are seeing some of these studies, why they're so important, is just finding instruments sensitive enough to actually detect these really small pieces of plastic. Yeah, all that being said, not a great vibe to know you got a whole spork floating around in your noggin every day.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It's just every time I open a W-2 after 8 p.m., it feels like I'm summoning something dark and dangerous.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
I think I'm celebrating by pouring one out for F. Scott Fitzgerald because, you know, the famous story is that this book was actually a commercial disappointment. It didn't actually sell very well in the first year, let alone in F. Scott Fitzgerald's lifetime. So he actually died kind of thinking it was a bit of a failure. Today, it sold over 25 million copies.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
He basically got Van Gogh'd a little bit. I'm also just happy it's called The Great Gatsby because the lower behind it is some other possibilities where under the red, white, and blue, Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires and The High Bouncing Lover. Those last two actually- Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires goes kind of hard. A little bit, yeah.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
But, yeah, I think it is just one of those traditional American stories that has endured that also just did not get off to a good start at all. And do you know why it actually did gain widespread popularity? No. It's the military kind of printed hundreds of thousands, millions of free paperbacks for soldiers to read as World War II was going on.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It is like it got, I mean, it's a marketing story like distribution is king, but also just shows you how stories can have mean so much in certain situations. I mean, people are literally reading this book before storming the beaches of Normandy. So it just shows how certain stories can just take a hold with our culture and endure for an entire century later.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Finally, Neil, if it looks like I have a little tear in my eye, it's because I do, from joy, because the best sporting event of the year is kicking off this morning, the Masters. Now, I love it because of the history and tradition and course design and competitiveness and announcers and theme song and aura and, okay, I'll stop.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
But even if you're not a golf fan, this tournament is one that is bigger than the game itself. It is a perfectly manicured, hyper-exclusive ecosystem where cell phones are banned, fans are politely called patrons, and the back nine is called the second nine.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The idiosyncrasies surrounding Augusta National don't stop on the fairways themselves, but extend to the food menu, where you can still get a pimento cheese sandwich for just $1.50, with the last prize prize coming back in 2002. They extend to the merch tent, which is rumored to do $1 million an hour in sales and leave grown men scrambling over garden gnomes.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The exclusivity extends all the way up to the broadcast network CBS and ESPN, who show up every year to bring you every shot without paying any rights fees. So yes, Neil, I am crying over here. Tears of happiness because it's finally that time of year again, a tradition. unlike any other.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
And the rights deal is just one of the more, again, idiosyncratic parts of this whole thing. Uh, Augusta is one of the, the masters is one of the most watched golfing events of the year. So estimates say that, uh, Augusta is forgoing $125 million in TV money every year under a standard media deal.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
That actually sounds kind of comforting. Do they make chamomile tea, too? That is two strikes, Toby.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
But the reason why they give it away for free is because they want complete creative control over how the broadcast is presented to people, which is why you hear very little sponsorship ad reads. Usually at a PGA Tournament, you're kind of slammed down the throat with commercials and ad reads. They want to keep commercial load to a minimum. They don't want the announcers referencing sponsors.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
They want to create this very curated product So they give it away for free. That being said, Augusta is probably going to clear about $150 million this weekend in gate merch and revenue and concessions. So they're not exactly pinching pennies here, but they are leaving some money on the table.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Oh, I'm just going to keep swinging. TaxAct makes it easy to file on your own terms with help when you need it and peace of mind when you're done. Just don't forget, file by April 15th at TaxAct.com.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
It does seem delicious. I will say the chocolate chip skillet cookie, that is an elite dessert choice right there. Absolutely delicious. The rest though, a little too heavy for my blood before a competitive event.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
President Trump checked beneath his couch cushions, found his universal tariff remote, and hit the pause button yesterday, halting his disruptive trade agenda and giving a shaking global economy a brief moment of respite. Just afternoon, the president announced that reciprocal tariffs on countries who hadn't retaliated against his levies would be paused for 90 days to allow for negotiations.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Who did that apply to? Literally every country except China. Under the updated trade plan, tariffs on global imports were lowered to just 10% across the board, while levies on China were raised to 125% effective immediately due to what Trump called a lack of respect that China has shown to the world's markets. Earlier in the day, Beijing said it was hiking its own retaliatory tariffs on the U.S.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
to 84% from 34%. Despite the still frosty relationship with China, all three major indexes exploded higher after the announcement. The S&P 500 leapt by 9% to notch its ninth best day in history. Apple traded like a meme stock and had its best day since 1998, while the Magnificent 7 added over a trillion dollars in market cap.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick posted a tweet that explained he sat next to Trump as he posted one of the most extraordinary truth posts of his presidency. And judging from how the market reacted, Neil, he may have been right.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
I do just want to dive deeper into these numbers too. The NASDAQ closed up more than 12%. That was its second best day ever in history. Look at these magnificent seven numbers. Tesla up 22%. Nvidia up 18%. Apple up 15%. Meta 14%. All the way down to Alphabet up 10%. You really just saw these massive, massive companies just rocket upwards. And we're talking history here.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Then what the heck is going on in the bond market that has investors so spooked? It's Thursday, April 10th. Let's ride.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So I said the second largest company. Second biggest jump in history. The top three spots belong to one January 3rd, 2001, where the Nasdaq jumped 14%. And then October 13th, 2008, the Nasdaq jumped 11%. That's the one in the three spots. In both of those other instances, though, the Nasdaq ended up making a new low, sometimes shortly afterwards.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So that is to say that this is not necessarily saying that we're... so back, mainly because there is still some uncertainty that hovers over the market right now, because this is still just a pause. So you never really know what's going to happen, even though for 90 days, it looks like there is a bit of a respite.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Let's go big picture here for a second. In the past few decades, the US has boasted just faster growth, more technological advancement, more cheap energy than any other really major economy. So that has caused worldwide investors to flock to, quote, American exceptionalism by buying a lot of its assets. But now suddenly that narrative is shifting a little bit.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The US is just a little less predictable. It's more antagonistic. It's definitely getting more isolated. So foreign investors are looking around and saying, it doesn't feel as safe anymore. So there might be some of that coming forward to the front of why this bond market is behaving like it is. Obviously, technical factors probably played some role.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Hedge funds are these institutions that might have been forced to liquidate some of its holdings because their trades started going south on them. But technical factors can't go as far to explain why yields were behaving as they were, especially weeks prior to. So a lot of this is tied to, again, I'm still big picture here, US dollar dominance.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The dollar has always been the, or not always, but recently it's been the world's reserve currency. And so investors in central banks use dollars to pay for things like imports, repay debt in emergencies. Businesses use it to facilitate cross-border payments. And all of that creates this huge need to hold dollars, which are typically invested in a treasury.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So the fact that the dollar is a reserve status has contributed to U.S. treasuries being this safe haven asset.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So all of these things with a weakening dollar and, you know, treasury yields behaving so strangely has really upended so much of the global order, which is why people are pointing to specifically the bond market as an explanation for why Trump instituted this 90-day pause, because it just is the plumbing of the global financial system.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Let's move on. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's an autonomous aircraft from a company called Zipline teaming up with Walmart to finally solve last mile delivery for good. The idea of drones filling in delivery gaps in distribution networks has long been a pipe dream for companies like Amazon and Walmart.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Instead of using big traffic-clogging trucks or people out on foot, drones can cover big chunks of a metro area with minimal cost and footprint. It's the thesis behind Zipline, an airborne delivery service that began rolling out in Dallas-Fort Worth area this week. Zipline drones, which is actually a term they avoid, preferring the name aircraft instead, come in two forms.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
One can hover in place using five propellers and take off vertically with a range of about 10 miles. When it arrives somewhere, a little baby craft called a zip drops down a tether to deliver your goods. The other craft looks like a glider and go up to 120 miles and deliver its payload via parachute. The applications go beyond getting your toilet paper each month.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Zipline has already worked to deliver life-saving medicines in places like Rwanda and Kenya, but it's also cutting its teeth in the US market at a Walmart superstore in Mesquite, Texas. You know, there's always been this idea of drones stepping into augment delivery networks, but Zipline thinks it's finally cracked the code.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
I love this report every single year. It also goes through the most forgetful cities. Surprise, surprise. New York, New York is number one. Also, they kind of note some trends that emerge over the year. One big one was that a lot of people were leaving Nintendo Switches behind. They recorded over 70 instances of that. So maybe Nintendo was looking at those figures and saying,
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
And everything about Zipline is very automatic. They have so many sensors on board. One of them is they collect air through tubes to figure out if there's bad weather approaching. They will then use that data to reroute themselves to avoid the weather. Also, just wind speed and direction is calculated as well. Once they're in the air, their Zipline operators like to say,
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
We don't actually know which way they're going to fly because once they're airborne, it's up to them to kind of chart their path forward. So it is one of those companies that just figured, just has been working on this for over a decade at this point. And they have kind of the delivery numbers to back it up. You look at a company like Amazon, who's been flirting with drones.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Obviously, they'd like it. They've done about 10,000 deliveries with them. Alphabet-backed Wing is another startup that have done about... half a million drone deliveries, which sounds like a lot. Zipline, on the other hand, is now well into one and a half million deliveries over their lifetime. So they're clearly kind of the leader in the clubhouse when it comes to this new technology.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
And a lot of people are very bullish on this from Walmart, who's rolling out this partnership to customers like Sweetgreen Chipotle. And we were kind of laughing before the show. We realized that the two best applications for drone delivery services. One, life-saving medicine in places that are hard to reach. And two, getting you your burrito on time without leaving your house.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
So Zipline is kind of running the gamut of these applications. Up next, I'm going to hand it over to Neil for some Neil's numbers.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The list is long, folks. The economic development corporation Jobs Ohio is making it insanely easy and appealing for businesses to lay down roots in the Buckeye State.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Yeah, you can really see their work in the accolades Ohio's received lately. CNBC ranked it at number seven in its list of top states for doing business and number two for the cost of doing business.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
The world's best get better in Ohio. Learn why companies like Andruil, Honda, and Intel are moving to Ohio. Head to JobsOhio.com slash WhyOhio. That's JobsOhio.com slash W-H-Y-Ohio.
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Trump Announces 90-Day Tariff Pause & Drones Deliver Your Packages?
Great question. And just saying there is a wrong answer, it's definitely data.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1st, 2025. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com. Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of leaders in your career. What traits do you think are most important?
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement and visceral power.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
What are the chances that it's a flaming hot dragon-shaped Cheeto? Plus, this is not the first time a uniquely shaped Cheeto has sold for a lot of money. In 2017, a Cheeto that looked like Harambe, the gorilla R.I.P., pulled in nearly $100,000 on eBay. So whoever bought this, I think you got a great deal, and I will certainly be looking at the shape of my snack foods more closely.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
FOMO is a hell of a drug. That was my big takeaway from this is that they know that they shouldn't be spending this much on concert tickets, but you see all your friends go. You see them all go into the Ares Tour, and you just can't help but shell out cash for... Guilty. Guilty. I know. We both went as well. FOMO is a heck of a thing.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But I do think, too, that we are also seeing just these unintended consequences where some fans are going into debt for these concerts, taking on credit card debt. They see it as a luxury good that they're overspending on. And... And coincidentally, scams are also growing in tandem with concert prices. You've maybe seen like an Instagram ad for like cheap Chapel Roan tickets.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And then you click on that and you pay $400 to someone that isn't actually going to give you a ticket. So there is a lot of unintended consequences of this massive, massive upturn in ticket prices. Imagine $44 to go see, you know, Taylor Swift.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
It is just a massive overstep. But officials have been trying these soft pressure tactics for a long time now. Those include visiting women at home to ask about their pregnancy plans, promoting this propaganda that... Predagency makes women smarter. Their goal, they say, is to create this fertility-friendly social atmosphere, especially in workplaces.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And this is not the only company that is pushing initiatives like this. There's this other big supermarket chain in China. The chain's founder posted on social media last year that he would forbid employees to exchange bride prices, which are these payments that can go upwards of tens of thousands of dollars that a man traditionally gives to a future wife's family.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil, I had a weird dream last night.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
He also said that employees would not be allowed to invite more than five tables of guests to their wedding, which honestly, maybe not a bad strategy. Constraints breed creativity there. You really figure out who you're... who your good friends are in that case. But yeah, this is just something that's been going on in China for a long time now.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The government and private employers may be overstepping their boundaries to try to increase the fertility rate.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So anyways, I was a world-famous investor that had one of those limitless pills that expanded my brain capacity, and I had a finger in every pie. Tech, healthcare, industrials, you name it, me and my big brain found a way to invest in every single one of them.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
However bad a day you think you are having, Mavericks fans are having a worse one. It's honestly just staggering at this point. This isn't pouring salt in the wound. This is making a spicy margarita in the wound left by the Luka Doncic trade.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And they are saying that, yeah, their season ticket increase actually represents savings of 15% to 23% when you compare it to the secondary market for next season. But that doesn't even make sense because if demand goes down, then it stands to reason that the price on the secondary market will go down as well. So this is just pretty much unjustified. I mean, maybe this was always planned.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
This was obviously something in the works for a while, but the fact that you roll it out now in the wake of everything that's happened, disaster when it comes to PR for the team. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Apple just refreshed the MacBook Air with its new AI-focused M4 processor. a slightly upgraded webcam, and most importantly, a lower price.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The 13-inch model now starts at just $999, making this the cheapest MacBook Air since Apple's transition to making its own silicon. While the updates aren't groundbreaking, other than the fact that it also comes in a beautiful sky blue hue now, the price cut is strategic as Apple faces pressure from slowing Mac sales and increasing tariffs on imported electronics.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Now, at this point, Apple is running up against the boundary of what you can do with a laptop, How much thinner and more powerful can they make this thing?
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The iceberg that sank the Titanic was maybe a quarter mile long, which is just laughably tiny in the face of this 1,300 square mile behemoth. A lot of scientists were saying, what does an iceberg like that look like? It just looks like a land mass. At this point, you can't see the edge of it, so it just literally looks like land in the middle of the ocean.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Also, I was looking into what happens when something of this size melts. It can sometimes be a good thing for an ocean ecosystem because icebergs contain nutrients that it could stimulate ocean productivity. The area it's in right now has lots of seals, local predators as well. So it could actually be a boon to this particular spot in the ocean where it's kind of met its final resting place.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
It's not quite Kendrick versus Drake, but I'm just nervous that soccer fans are crazy because they've started to roll out performances before games like the Champions League final. Last year, Lenny Kravitz played at Wembley Stadium, but then two years ago or three years ago, Camila Cabello was absolutely drowned out by Liverpool and Real Madrid fans ahead of the Champions League final.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
If this is a tense final, you're telling me that Ed Sheeran's going to come out between, you know, Argentina versus Brazil or something like that. The fans are just going to be going ballistic. So who knows how, I can't imagine that, you know, the Imagine Dragons would be received very well. Finally, a Florida man just took the phrase, eat the rich to a whole new level.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Police say 32-year-old Jathan Gilder walked into a Tiffany & Co. jewelry shop, claimed to represent a pro athlete, and convinced employees to show him high-value items before snatching over $750,000 worth of earrings and making a run for it.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
When officers caught up with him later that day, they saw him, quote, swallowing several objects believed to be the stolen earrings, which turned the heist into the world's worst waiting game for authorities. I encourage you all to go look up this x-ray which police released showing evidence a foreign object inside of his abdomen.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
I don't even want to think about that. Just pop it in some cleaning solution. I'm sure Tiffany, you know, put it back on shelves soon after.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Probably a better podcaster too. With Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosure in podcast description. U.S.
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I want you to share the podcast with someone who should probably go look through their old Pokemon cards again, or share it with someone who should go look through their snack foods a little more closely. You never know what you might find.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
automakers heard the sweetest nine-letter word in the dictionary yesterday, hodgepodge. JK, the word was exemption. One day before Trump's 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico went into effect, Trump announced a one-month exemption for auto companies.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The administration made the decision after speaking with officials from Ford, GM, and Stellantis yesterday where they warned that rising costs from the tariffs would cause auto prices to spike by thousands of dollars.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The reprieve sent shares in all three companies sharply upwards, fighting against the overall gravity of a market that is flashing an increasing amount of warning lights showing that the U.S. may be heading down a path towards an economic slowdown. Despite the brief reprieve for automakers, tariff anxiety has sent recession fears spiking.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
A recent model from JP Morgan puts the chances of a recession at 31% up from 17% in November. Another model from Goldman Sachs is also seeing a recession risk creep up, now at 23% up from 14% at the start of the year. while a downturn isn't the most likely outcome by any stretch.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Some key indicators are flashing strong signs, suggesting the economy is on the precipice of sliding in the wrong direction. Oil prices are at their lowest level since October. Stocks are reeling across the world. U.S. factory activity is stagnating, and perhaps most important of all, consumer confidence is slumping. All of those factors are combining to raise fears of stagflation in the U.S.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
economy, where prices continue to rise, but growth slows. Neil, let's start with this tariff reprieve first, but then transition to what these recession indicators might mean.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Then one day after automakers' lives got flipped, turned upside down by tariffs, Trump gave the industry a one-month reprieve. It's Thursday, March 6th. Let's ride.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Yeah, let's run down some of those warning signs, some of the data. Nominal personal spending fell 0.2% between December 8th. That was the largest fall since all the way back in 2021. Adjusted for inflation, personal consumption was down 0.5%. It doesn't sound like a lot, but again, personal consumption is one of the big drivers of GDP in this country. U.S.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
retail sales fell by about a percent between December and January. The consumer confidence survey that the conference board does, that slid this... seven points in February. That was the steepest decline we saw since summer of 2021. So a lot of warning signs, a lot of cracks everywhere you look.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Now, we should take a step back, though, and say, to be clear, sometimes financial markets aren't exactly Nostradamus when it comes to pricing in recessions. Recession bets were way off back in 2023. Bloomberg forecasted a 100% chance of recession, but the U.S. consumer proved to be a lot more resilient than anyone expected in the face of those higher interest rates.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So just take it with a grain of salt. Additionally, some of this bad economic news have come from reports based on surveys, which is not first-party data. It's really take them with a grain of salt. So we should say that despite all of these indicators flashing kind of yellow lights and red lights in some instances, you can't just say, oh, yeah, we're definitely heading towards a recession.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Now, this isn't actually a new policy. It's just been happening faster than ever. The GSA has been reducing the government's office footprint since 2013. It's shrunk by over 43% over the last decade. Now it's just happening a lot quicker. And this has definitely been affecting the DC and the metro area. More than 98 leases covering 2 million square feet have already been canceled or restructured.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
In total, 63% of space cuts and 69% of cost savings have happened in the capital. So DC real estate market very much exposed to this initiative. And it could deepen this commercial real estate crisis that we've been seeing. The federal government just owns so much space in the capital, 174 million square feet of space. It pays $5.78 billion annually in rent.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So by canceling leases, by selling buildings, the government risks leaving landlords with these big vacancies, which would worsen an already pretty fragile office market.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
One thing that is true, though, the government has been overpaying for office space. A report found that federal agencies pay 50% more per square foot than comparable private sector office buildings. So if you do cut this low-hanging fruit, like expensive leases, like expiring leases, you could save billions of dollars.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But critics say the speed of the cuts is the thing that could disable this pretty fragile real estate.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Let's move on to our next story. Scientists have been trying to bring back the woolly mammoth, but so far, all they've got is a really hairy mouse. Researchers at Colossal Biosciences announced this week that they have successfully genetically modified lab mice to have long woolly coats similar to mammoths.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
marking what they claim it is an important step towards reviving the extinct species and also an important step towards giving mice funny little hairdos. The Dallas-based company has raised $435 million in the pursuit of de-extinction, with plans to introduce woolly mammoth-like elephants back into the world by 2028. But a mouse is a far cry from a mammoth.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Critics have pushed back, saying that the team's changes mainly involved tweaking mouse genes to produce changes in their coats rather than introducing any mammoth genes. There's also the critique that, hey, maybe these millions of dollars should go towards protecting ecosystems that exist right now rather than making fuzzy lab animals in the pursuit of resurrecting the dead.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
But Colossal is confident in their vision. It does not accelerate anything, but it's a massive validating point, Ben Lamb, Colossal CEO, told The Guardian. I encourage everyone to go look up Furry Mammoth Mice 2, Neil, because they do have some luscious locks.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
And their long-term vision for this mammoth project is to not only resurrect a species and make these advancements in gene technology, but they also think that it could help the environment because to them, there's real utility to bringing back mammoths. The idea is that these animals could help restore Arctic ecosystems by preventing permafrost thaw. which releases carbon to the atmosphere.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Oh, I thought you were going to say Pickle Chew there. I think this card is underpriced, Neil. Didn't think that was going to be my take, but two factors here led me to that conclusion. One, Charizard is one of the most valuable Pokemon characters. Holographic Charizard cards sold for upwards of $500,000. Two, it's a flaming hot Cheeto.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
They walk over the ground, which actually compresses the snow and grass that insulates the ground. So they're saying that long-term, if we introduce this species back into the world, it could actually help the environment in a meaningful way. But who knows, actually, because they are saying that this really...
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
The money could be spent doing things that save animals on Earth now rather than this future Hail Mary dream of a project. But you are right that they do make these advancements. They do put out these marketing press releases, and you have to pay attention to them because, I mean, they made these really crazy-looking mice right here.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
So I do think that their approach could be criticized, but it does seem like they are making progress in some direction.
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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
Up next, he was gone last week, but he's back now. It's time for Neil's numbers. He's about to break it down. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card. Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase.
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You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card. Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees.
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To get started, head to the Wallet app on your iPhone where you can apply in minutes and start using your Apple Card right away to watch that daily cash roll in. Let's ride. Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and savings by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City branch.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
You know who has no time for bureaucratic delays? It is beavers. Fun fact about beavers, when they create dams, they also create special pools that are conducive to growing their favorite food, which is this leafy green shoots. So they aren't just building a dam, they are also building a farm at the same time. So look at them stimulating economic activity. But here is my galaxy brain, take Neil.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
This committee that released the report did not actually go as far as to explain these trends because you said it's a diverse group of 14 people. So none of them could really agree on why our economy is doing so well. But all these other indicators are going the other direction. So the New York Times kind of called them all up individually and asked them, hey, what do you think is going on here?
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And they said that they identified five themes here. One, the U.S. economy. prioritizes GDP above all. A lot of our government policy, a lot of things about our culture are geared towards prioritizing economic growth, maybe at the expense of some other things. Then also another theme is a lot of us are pulling apart. We're becoming more isolated. We've talked about this on the show a lot.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
We don't go to church anymore. You don't go to meetings anymore. There's less gatherings. Part of it is the reliance on technology. Three, the United States is still a very unequal place or inequal place because, yes, maybe the entire economic pie has grown, but potentially that's just been concentrating at the top more. And then four, I'm almost done there, affluence itself. You're teaching me.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, a lot of the problems we have is reflected by the very affluence we have. So think about it. If you have an abundance of food, that might lead to a rise in obesity. If you have rising incomes, you can buy smartphones, which means you don't hang out with your friends as much anymore. And then five...
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
This one was my favorite, and it was just bad luck that we have gone through a lot of things recently. Once-in-a-lifetime financial crisis, once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, once-in-a-lifetime bout of inflation as well. So some historians and some of these people who worked on it said, maybe we're just in a crummy period and we will emerge out of it. Some people pushed back against that.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But those were kind of the five themes that they identified. Toby's numbers.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, and the researchers didn't want to go as far as to saying this is exactly why they are speaking a little bit more during this 40-year stretch. But one possibility is that those tend to be the child-rearing years. And if you assume that women are typically the primary caregiver, they might be speaking more to their children than men do that time.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
So that is potentially the reason for that 3,000-word gap. But they also said, look it. There is a ton of variation between individuals as well as between genders. The study's least talkative person was a man who spoke an estimated 100 words a day, a man of very few words. And then the most talkative person was also a man who spoke more than 120,000 words a day.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Those beavers actually just destroyed $1.2 million of GDP for the Czech Republic doing construction without a permit. So maybe it's time to rethink how we calculate GDP to include unpaid labor from animals like beavers. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, between us two, who is the more responsible one?
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
I would like to get those two in a room together and see what happens.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
It absolutely is. I love this story because, one, it is very rare. Rare people are saying it's like seeing a living fossil. There's only 650 left in existence. But it's also the best. People likened it to saying, imagine if the best iPhone was invented today. 300 years ago and all the advances since haven't improved upon this one design.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
I encourage people to go onto YouTube too, because there's some, you know, violinists who have tested out like a $10 violin, a hundred dollar violin, and then like a million dollar shot of various violin. And it does like, even to my untrained ear, you're like, wait a second, there's a lot more going on here. So I do think this is a case where it's absolutely worth it.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
This, you know, could to be one of the most expensive instruments ever sold.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, part of this is obviously driven by recent court decisions and executive orders from the current administration. They are aimed at curbing a DI in the government and with federal contractors. Google does work with the government across various things. They aren't alone either. Meta also eliminated the team overseeing its diversity efforts last month.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And then also Amazon told employees in December that it would wind down some of its diversity initiatives. So it does look like this is where the winds are blowing in the big tech universe. Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has a new target in mind, the Medicare and Medicaid payment systems.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Unfortunately, I have to agree with you, which is why I am such a fan of Wise Business. It is like the Neil of international payments. Always prepared, always reliable.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
He and his team are combing through payments from the agency targeting what they consider potential fraud and inefficiencies. The team is specifically focused on canceling DEI contracts across the Department of Health and Human Services. including those with major contractors like Deloitte. CMS assigned two veteran employees to collaborate with Doge to ensure appropriate access to their systems.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But Neil, the Wall Street Journal called CMS the nerve center of the nation's healthcare economy. It outlaid $1.5 trillion the last fiscal year, or about 22% of the federal total. So this is a bigger task and target than any Doge has taken on so far.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Finally, someone in Pennsylvania is living large after pulling off a heist of one of the most valuable substances in the world right now. No, they didn't steal any silver or gold. Instead, the thief made off with 100,000 eggs from the back of a trailer in Antrim Township.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Police are looking at surveillance footage and tracking down potential witnesses to try and crack the case, but so far, they don't have any leads. In my career, I've never heard of 100,000 eggs being stolen at 12-year law enforcement veteran Megan Fraser said yesterday. According to the police, the eggs are worth about $40,000, which means we are talking about a felony here.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Neil, either someone is capitalizing on record high wholesale egg prices or some teens are about to egg a lot of houses.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
I think, well, they definitely cracked a few eggs, but I think they were just on a trailer that they unhitched, so it was already packaged for them. But I was surprised that it was only $40,000. I mean this is 100,000 eggs. We're talking about each – if you go to Whole Foods, it's a dollar for an egg per dozen. But obviously this is like wholesale prices that we're talking about here.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
For an international business account as prepared as Neil, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
So I just know – in my mind, someone just drove by, saw a ton of eggs. They're like, wait a second. That's a lot of money right there and made off with it. But it's looking to be, you know, the perfect crime right now. Police are stumped at who did this. They don't have any footage about it. So this could be just like one of those mysteries that go down in history.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
I want you to share the podcast with someone via email with the subject line fork in the road. Either listen to MBD and you can stay their friend or don't and break up all contact with them. All right, that's a little intense, but share the pod, see what happens.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
great show today Neil let's run it back tomorrow
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, you have started to see people warning federal employees to not accept the offer because one possibility is the workers don't get paid the full term and then file lawsuits against the government saying, hey, wait a second, you were supposed to pay me this.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But then if the actual offer in the first place was unlawful, then there's no legal recourse against something that wasn't legal in the first place. So yeah, there's a couple of things that this offer potentially violates. One is the Anti-Deficiency Act. This is a law that prevents the government from promising money in excess of what Congress has allocated.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And remember, Congress has only funded the government through mid-March. We're going to have another one of those big budget meetings, not through the end of the fiscal year, not through the end of December where these payments would go. So they're saying we can't even... You can't promise money that hasn't been allocated yet. So that's one issue.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And then there's this other federal provision that says you're not allowed to pay federal workers on paid leave for over 10 days. And the idea is you don't want to pay federal employees for not working. It's actually a very Dogean law if you think about it. So those are the two kind of legal issues that go against this fork in the road offer.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Then Tesla's sales across Europe took a nosedive as Elon Musk dives deeper into the region's politics. It's Thursday, February 6th. Let's ride.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Right. A lot of people said mainly the people who are leaving already had other job offers waiting for them. Because remember, even though 20,000 workers sounds like a lot, that is well within that, you know, 6% attrition rate that you mentioned. That being said, the White House has said that the number of deferred resignations is rapidly growing.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
They do expect a big surge in these last 24, 48 to 24 hours. We are right. I
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, so the fork in the road email was sent last week, but now we are really at that juncture. Lost in Elon's infiltration of the federal government is the fact that he is still operating multiple very large businesses, one of which is trending in the right direction, the other not so much. First up, the social media platform X is suddenly looking a lot healthier than it did a year ago.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
For a while, it looked like the exit path for the Wall Street banks that funded Elon's acquisition of Twitter was going to be a turbulent one. His controversial moderation strategies led to an advertiser exodus, which caused the platform's value and the loans Wall Street held to plummet in value. So Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and others started shopping around to offload those loans.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But since Trump's election win, investors have changed their tune on X. And as of yesterday, the banks were able to sell $5.5 billion in X debt for around $0.97 on the dollar, up from the $3 billion at $0.95 they initially expected. Neil, this still isn't exactly a healthy company. X is still struggling to break even.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
But the combination of Musk's Washington Connects and the growing intertwining of X with XAI, his artificial intelligence company, has investors interested again and banks breathing a sigh of relief.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Another thing too, it may The banks that did take the risk on Musk look even better here. So you look at the names, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays. These are the banks that lent the funds to Musk to complete the acquisition. And they're looking kind of smart now because one, they've been collecting these hefty interest payments.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And then two, a lot of people would say, oh, those loans are super underwater. But they just sold for 97 or 98 cents on the dollar. So they did recoup a lot of their investment. And hopefully why they maybe took the risk in the first place is that Elon owns a lot of businesses. He has a lot of influence when he is looking to Wall Street to fund something else or for help on something else.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
He'll remember those banks that did take the risk on him. Suddenly, even though maybe a year ago you would have said, ah, not a great decision to fund this acquisition, now they're looking better if Musk is willing to do business with them going forward as the people who were by his side during this X acquisition. The other business Elon runs, lest we forget, is Tesla.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And that is not going as well. Car sales data from the first month of the year is coming in from Europe, and it looks like Europeans did dry Tesla January. Sales are way down in France, Germany, and the UK, as Europe emerged as a major headache for the carmaker on the heels of its recent financial miss. Tesla's sales were flaky as a croissant in France, dropping 63% from a year earlier.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
German sales went from bad to worst, with a 59% drop in January. In Britain, where Musk has been beefing with Prime Minister Keir Starmer, sales are down 12%. Sweden is another problem area after a mechanic strike against Tesla led to demand sliding 44%, worse than the 38% drop it saw in neighboring Norway. All across the continent, Europe is souring on Tesla.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
And I do think you have to dig deeper here and see, are EV sales just falling across the continent? In some cases, that is the case. In France, EV sales fell 6%. But I mean, again, Tesla sales fell 63%. So it's falling at a much quicker rate. But then you look at the UK and you're like, oh, Tesla just fell 12%. But EV sales were actually 35% higher in January 2025 compared to the year earlier.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
So yes, the entire pie is growing, but Tesla is getting to eat less and less of it. So it's definitely a combination of all those factors. But Europe is still an important market for Tesla. I mean, it's an affluent sector of the world. They do sell a lot of cars there. So you don't want to see these 50%, 60% drops from these European markets.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
Yeah, people have pointed out that self-determination of conflict of interest in itself is a conflict of interest. So it's conflict of interest all the way down. You know what isn't a conflict of interest? That's Neil's numbers, which is coming up next. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card.
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
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Fed Workers Weigh Trump’s Buyout Offer & Tesla Sales Struggle in Europe
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
The Switch being so successful is a double-edged sword because now everyone is going to compare it to that gaming console that was so beloved. So usually Nintendo gets around these by... designing a whole new form function when they're releasing follow-up consoles like the Wii and Wii U were completely different devices.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
This time they're trying to learn from those mistakes, but also they might be making a mistake because they're basically copying and pasting the original one with a few new tweaks. So there's definitely some question marks hanging around this, even though there does seem to be a lot of support and a lot of people willing to shell out that extra $150 to buy and upgrade the Switch 2.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Up next, let's talk about some fun numbers, and that is coming from Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Technology can help us optimize some of life's most basic tasks. We've even got tech to help us brush our teeth.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It has a dynamic LED touch bar that lets you choose between 16 different brushing intensities from sensitive to deep clean for up to 15 times more plaque removal versus a manual toothbrush.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And the next one is just more of a tip. And that's from user What's Up Caramel. And her tip was, Barilla Pasta has a Spotify playlist. Each playlist is the exact length of cook time for the varieties of pasta. Press play, drop the noodles, music stops, al dente noodles, which honestly is a very helpful fact and it's way more fun than a kitchen timer.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
You can even pair your Quip Ultra to the Quip app on your phone to get a personalized look at your oral health.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
If you're trying to elevate your style, it's all about tailoring. And Theory's Motionwool takes tailoring to a new level with premium, expertly engineered Italian wool.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Motion Wool's one-of-a-kind fabrication is where form meets function. It's breathable, wrinkle-resistant, and machine washable. So you can head from the office to happy hour to date night.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Step up your wardrobe with Motion Wool. Head to theory.com slash morningbrew to get started. That's theory.com slash morningbrew.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Yeah, some of the challenges are Chipotle is very particular about which avocados they use. They love Haas avocados, which are a lot more fattier. They have more fuller flavors. So you can't necessarily use some of those avocados native to Central and South America countries, which usually have a lower oil and a more muted flavor.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And also when you diversify your avocado source, you create a lot of challenges within Chipotle kitchens themselves because Peruvian and Columbia avocados have different shades than the ones that come from Mexico and California. So that leads to a differing experience for a
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
customers who are looking at the shade of the avocado i definitely do this when i go into chipotle i go is this like is this looking like a fresh batch or is this looking like a little too oxidized and aged right now and i make my decision if i want to upgrade for that guac based on how it looks and especially so chipotle knows this so they've really kept their staff educated and updated on how to deal with various species of avocado just a very fascinating supply chain issue all the way from where you source it from to how you present it at the restaurants themselves
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
So yeah, these are just stuff that you can drop. Say you claimed them from Morning Brew Daily or just say that you came up with them yourself, but very good small talk alternatives to saying what's going on with the weather these days. Now, a word from our sponsor, TaxAct. Neil, you ever feel like doing your taxes is like trying to read a foreign language?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It's absolutely a force. I mean, when I read that people were just going to places to sit in chairs that their Oshis went to, that was kind of mind-blowing to me. That's a fandom even beyond what the Swifties do here in America. But this is an absolute economic force that is here to stay.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It definitely gained some speed during the pandemic, but the Bank of Japan is referencing it because they're like, this is a legitimate driver of consumption in our economy right now. This is especially good to note because Right now, it looks like Japan's in line for some very big pay raises. 20-somethings will probably receive a very large raise come springtime.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And obviously, the economic authorities want to know where that money is going to go. And it looks like a fair amount, $23 billion is not nothing. It's not the biggest part of the economy, but it's also not the smallest part. So, Oshikatsu is definitely something that is an economic force, which sounds... Kind of crazy to say, but it absolutely is a driver of spending in that country.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
No, I mean, I was literally staring at a form yesterday thinking, this might as well be ancient Greek, which, to be clear, I do not speak.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
There is this meme of just one more collider, bro. I just need one more. Just give me 20 billion more and I'll solve antimatter, we promise. And it looks like CERN is kind of playing that out in real time. 56 mile loop is hard to comprehend underground too. Of course, this price tag is going to be very big. And of course, it's gotten some pushback as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
A lot of scientists and physicists believe that Maybe this money could be allocated better towards smaller and cheaper colliders. Also, the timeline is just ridiculous. It won't come online fully until, you know, 2070s, which is kind of crazy to think about.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
So a lot of members of the scientific community are looking at it and saying you're basically just saddling the physics world with a 70-year mortgage payment to kind of work out through. Those are people I don't want coming to my party. That's true, but also they have a good point. Big colliders, let's go. I know, big colliders is pretty fun.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And I do, I mean, Higgs boson was discovered by CERN back a decade plus ago. So who knows what this new collider might unveil. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines that you may have missed. Up first, if you thought your online shopping experience didn't have enough Benson Boone edits, Amazon is looking to rectify that oversight.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
The e-com giant has reportedly made a last-minute bid to acquire TikTok. The offer comes as TikTok faces an April 5 deadline to divest from its Chinese ownership or risk a ban in the U.S. Amazon's interest in TikTok makes a lot of sense. TikTok wields significant influence on social commerce these days, with nearly half of U.S. users making purchases influenced by the platform.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
However, sources indicate that people on TikTok's side are not really taking Amazon's bid seriously, meaning this might be more of a Hail Mary on Amazon's side rather than a major e-commerce tie-up. Still, April 5th is in two days, Neil, so you never know what will happen.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Yeah, we absolutely could have seen this one coming. Zuckerberg has been very vocal about his love for UFC, and him and Dana White have been growing closer. Dana White is now on Meta's board. And also, one other thing to note here is that the UFC's media rights are coming up soon. Their current partner, ESPN, has their negotiating window open April 15th.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It doesn't look like they're going to renew that deal, so inking this very large deal right ahead of negotiations is just another win for UFC. It's another come up because now they have this, you know, very large and deep pocketed sponsor to go along with negotiating for, for new media rights.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Finally, Coastal Carolina football fans are probably more excited for this year's football season than any other program, not because they suddenly found a Tom Brady's era parent, but because the school is starting an initiative that allows ticket holders to grab up to four items per concession stand visit completely for free.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Yes, the CCU kickoff meal deal lets you get hot dogs, popcorn, fountain drinks, you name it, for $0, and there's no limit on the number of visits you can make in a game. Average attendance at Coastal Carolina football games was about 21,000 during the 2024 season.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And while it was hard to break out specific concessions revenue in the athletic department's annual financial report, estimates put the figure at around $250,000 per game. So that is a lot of money it is foregoing. But Neil, before you abandon your Maryland Terrapins to become a Chanticleer fan, the program excludes alcoholic beverages. Still not a bad deal though.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
There's not a lot of asterisks. It is good that they're excluding alcohol because that would just be too far. But yeah, I think what a way to, you know, encourage some goodwill among your fan base to say, hey, have some popcorn and have some hot dogs for free.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Let's dive into a little bit about how these rates were calculated. I'm going to use Lesotho here as an example. It's a country with a GDP of just $2.4 billion. Half of its population lives on less than $4 a day. So Lesotho is being hit with a 50% tariff under Trump's trade plan. That is the highest of any country. And it's not because they actually impose high tariffs on the US. They do not.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
But you get that number by taking the nation's trade deficit with us and dividing it by the nation's exports to us. In Lesotho's case, they export $236 million of goods. We send them just $7 million. So the trade deficit there is $229 million. You divide that by their total imports and that you get 97%. That's the tariff Lesotho is deemed to charge the U.S. with.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And so half of that, because Trump said he was being lenient, is roughly 50%. And that's what the U.S. is reciprocating with. So why is there a gap there in the first place? That is what you have to dive into here. Not because they don't really like U.S. goods. Again, they're not a rich nation, so they cannot buy things we make like Teslas.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And as for the other goal of tariffs, to bring manufacturing back home, diamonds are Lesotho's top export. So we can't really reshore diamond manufacturing here in the U.S. because there are no diamonds here. So that is just one instance that provides a microcosm as to why economists may be scratching their heads here is because
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
The manner in which that these were calculated, which is taking the nation's trade deficit with us, dividing by the nation's exports to us and cutting it in half seems to be a little bit imprecise.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Then the Nintendo Switch 2 was unveiled, and it costs nearly the same as an Xbox. It's Thursday, April 3rd. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And I think one of the reasons why this trade war is harder to navigate than the last one is the fact that if you're a business, you don't know where to put up your manufacturing. And last time when it was mostly China-focused, you are right. You could go to Vietnam, and that's where you could feel confident about investing in your production there.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
But right now, it's a little bit unclear where to invest. Trump says invest in America, but that takes a while to spin up manufacturing, actually a long time to spin up manufacturing in the United States. So while this uncertainty is hanging in the air, a lot of people end up waiting and not making those investments, which leads to demand falling as well, which could end up
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
impacting the economy in a global economy in a broader way. So that uncertainty that this injects is one of the reasons why economists love to push back on tariffs, because you need to be able to plan one, five, 10 years down the future if you are a business.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Tesla dropped its delivery numbers yesterday, and they literally dropped. The EV maker reported double-digit shrinkage in the first quarter as it faced everything from increased competition to political blowback against Elon Musk. Tesla delivered just over 336,000 vehicles in Q1, good for a 13% decline from the previous year, and its sharpest year-over-year decline since the pandemic.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It was also the fewest number of deliveries for Tesla in any quarter dating back to 2022. The figure looks even worse when you realize that other parts of the auto industry are chugging along quite nicely. Tesla's Chinese nemesis BYD saw its annual sales jump 60% in the first quarter, while domestic rival GM reported 17% sales growth.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Even the notoriously bullish Tesla analyst Dan Ives struck a more somber tone when covering the numbers. We are not going to look at these numbers with rose-colored glasses. They were a disaster on every metric, he wrote. He then offered his advice for how to stop the bleeding, and that is Musk needs to stop this political firestorm and balance being CEO of Tesla with Doze.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Luckily for Tesla investors, it looks like that day may be coming sooner rather than later. Politico reported that President Trump told his inner circle that Musk was on his way out, which helped the stock climb out of the hole its delivery numbers created. But then Trump's Rose Garden tariff announcement sent the stock down again in the after hours trading. So snip, snap, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Yeah, Dan Ives called it a brand crisis at Tesla right now. Some analysts estimated that Tesla lost about 80,000 potential deliveries because of, quote, brand damage. And a lot of that was actually related to damage coming to Tesla shops and charging stations. There was protests outside 90 or so shops and stations.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Last month, there's been a dozen or so violent acts directed at Tesla facilities as well. You know, protesters have been throwing Molotov cocktails in some instances at it. So there's definitely been a lot of pushback there. And you're right, it was telegraphed a little bit because Europe essentially has gone on strike against Tesla. Sales in Germany are falling, France are falling.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
So it's definitely been one thing after the other impacting this company. And it wasn't like these delivery numbers were ever going to be good, but they were a little bit worse than a lot of people were expecting.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Let's move on. A small device with very big shoes to fill was unveiled yesterday as Nintendo pulled the curtain back on its new Switch 2 console. It's the follow-up act to the original Switch, which introduced the mega-successful hybrid console concept eight years ago. But like Ocean's Twelve proved, it's very hard to create a worthy sequel when the original is so beloved.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Well, first of all, some of these viral answers, you definitely had to fact check. And Community Notes was having a field day. So that's why the first fact I picked came from Encyclopedia Britannica. And they said, October 31st, 2000 was the last time all of humanity was on Earth. Since then, there's always been at least one person in space. So commit that to memory to use at cocktail parties.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
The Switch 2 will launch in early June for $450, a $150 jump from the first-generation model, and that extra $150 will get you a few new features, including a game chat function that will let you curse out your opponents in Mario Kart, as well as a camera function that shows your face when you spew those expletives.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
It's those features along with some beefed up hardware that gives it a bigger screen and more storage that Nintendo is hoping will convince fans that the gameplay experience will be differentiated enough to make the upgrade. Which is going to be a tough ask because The original is the third best-selling gaming console of all time. It sold roughly 150 million units since it launched back in 2017.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
And it's not like Nintendo has always nailed its follow-up acts. It sold over 100 million Wiis, but followed that up with just 13 million sales of the Wii U. This time around, it's trying to avoid that drop-off, positioning the Switch 2 as a direct follow-up to the original instead of mixing things up.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
But by playing it safe, Neil, it's also taking a bit of a risk because now you're asking consumers to fork up more money for what is essentially a revamped version of its current console.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
There are a lot more challenges this time around, though. The gaming landscape is a lot different. One, there's tariffs on Chinese goods that could impact the production, the shipping costs, impact everything. Also, there's a lot more competition from mobile games now than when the Switch originally launched. And then there's also just this, a lot of pressure to live up to its predecessor.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Well, first of all, Neil, it's been winter, so I'm not exactly sun-kissed. But also, it's tax season. Needless to say, I'm a little nervous.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
That's why they created MitoPure, a clinically proven healthy aging breakthrough. MitoPure increases your energy at the source, improving muscle strength, and giving you the power to bounce back from your daily activities.
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Want to feel aging differently? Get 10% off your first order of MitoPure at timeline.com slash morningbrewdaily. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E dot com slash morningbrewdaily. My winner of the weekend is hitting dingers because with a new bat design the New York Yankees cooked up for this season, it's looking like you're going to be seeing a lot more home runs.
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On Saturday, the Bronx Bombers hit a team record nine home runs against the poor Milwaukee Brewers, then followed up that performance with a four home run game the next day. Eagle-eyed fans were quick to note that the bats that some players were using looked a little different.
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They were shaped almost like bowling pins, with more mass concentrated in the middle near the sweet spot rather than spread evenly throughout the barrel. This design was not the result of an affinity for torpedoes, but rather the work of an MIT physicist on the payroll named Aaron Lenhart. Despite his lofty credentials, his explanation for the design tweak was not exactly rocket science.
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Really, it's just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you're trying to do damage on the baseball, he told The Athletic. In other words, make fat bat hit ball hard. Now, I know what you're thinking. Yankees, controversial performance edge. Is this cheating? The answer is no. The bats appear to comply with MLB regulations.
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League rules specify that bats must be no longer than 42 inches, no thicker than 2.61 inches, and made of solid wood. And these Yankee bats violate none of the above. Neal. As a Red Sox fan, how do you feel about these new super bats?
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But Neil, you know me. I always have a million questions like, what if I miss deductions, credits, or something important?
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
What is fantastic. Funny, though, is that these bats aren't actually universally adapted by the Yankees at all. Aaron Judge, who you just mentioned, for instance, isn't making the switch. He basically said, have you looked at what I've done over the past few years? Why would I fix what ain't broke? And he's been hitting the most home runs on the Yankees.
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So part of it is also maybe just a placebo effect. Volpe, another player on the Yankees, said... A lot of it is just looking out at your bat and you see how big the barrel it is. It's exciting. I think any 0.001% mentally that could give you confidence helps. So maybe it is just as much of a mental placebo effect as it is actually boosting performance. But I do think you're right.
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This whole weekend, people on social media were saying like, How did no one think about this? Like, put more mass where you hit the ball. Like, it seems so simple, but at the same time, it did take, you know, an MIT physicist to think outside the box and actually make this switch.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Moving on, fans of the HBO series White Lotus have been treated to a buffet of uncomfortable moments this season, ranging from funny to completely unwatchable while in the vicinity of your immediate family. But officials from one particular Southern university are not enjoying the highly rated third season at all, and that is Duke.
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Duke has played a prominent supporting role so far, one that doesn't portray the Blue Devils in the best light. One of the show's main characters, Timothy Ratliff, who is played by Jason Isaacs, a.k.a. Lucius Malfoy, is a businessman and a Duke alumni who is on vacay in Thailand. Now, I'll pause here if you haven't seen the show yet because spoilers ahead. Seriously, you've had your chance.
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All right, if you're caught up, you know that Ratliff is the subject of an investigation for some financial crimes, and his son Saxon, who is also a Duke alum, has an interesting encounter with his brother. The legal situation causes the elder Ratliff to spiral. He steals his wife's anti-anxiety meds and also gets his hands on a resort security card's gun.
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In one scene, he has the gun to his head while very conspiratorially We'll be right back. Frank Tramble, a VP of comms at Duke, sent an email that the show, quote, not only uses our brand without permission, but in our view, uses it on imagery that is troubling, does not reflect our values or who we are, and simply goes too far. And now this interesting IP legal battle has emerged.
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Is HBO legally allowed to use the Duke name and brand in such unflattering ways? How far do trademark protections extend? And most importantly, Neil, will Duke win the national championship? Because I really need them to for my bracket.
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Okay, that actually sounds way less stressful.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
I mean, this is not the first time this has happened, too. I mean, you know the adages. There's no such thing as bad publicity. But, in fact, a lot of brands have kind of gone through the same thing that Duke is going through right now. The most recent one that is top of mind is Peloton, who had to do a lot of damage control after a reboot of Sex and the City.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Had someone exercising on a Peloton die, and I'll leave it at that because, again, spoilers. The company said that at the time, yes, they approved their usage of Peloton bike in the show, but they didn't know exactly how it was used and tried to walk back their association with it.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
I think a similar thing is happening with Duke right now, but they might have stricened effect themselves a little bit where if they had just not responded or not acknowledged it at all, we probably wouldn't be talking about it right now. So you... Yes, you understand the desire to disassociate yourself from this, but on the other hand, they're also drawing a lot of attention to it.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Wait, that's the exact nightmare I've been having.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Again, nothing is certain until it happens. And some of these orders are reversed as soon as they are given. But this is a risky trade war, as we've spoken about. Stocks don't like it every day. American budgets don't like it. Businesses don't like it.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
But what we'll see here is if, A, if these tariffs happen, B, if they are like broccoli, bad in the moment, but good for you long term, or C, maybe they're like moldy broccoli, bad in the moment and bad long term. So that's kind of the options that are branching out in front of us ahead of this, quote unquote, liberation day.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Today is the final trading day of Q1 and Wall Street's 2025 is off to a start you'd expect from the Chicago White Sox. Nothing has quite gone according to plan with the S&P 500 fresh off recording its fifth weekly loss in the past six weeks as it digested some less than stellar economic news.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Yeah, the jobs market has been one of these shining lights. It's been steady. It's withstood a lot of pressure from different parts of the economy. This is truly a make or break it moment. Not make or break it, but we'll actually see if Doge's effects are going to show up in the jobs report because it has been steady.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And if that steady drumbeat starts to falter a little bit, that's when things get a little bit more dicey.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Yeah, I think that little China tidbit is something that's very interesting to look like because Trump has acknowledged that this deal will only get done with China's approval. So maybe a little reduction in tariffs is floating down the pipeline. So it is funny how TikTok has suddenly become part of this trade war and has become part of this global reorganization of trade.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So every time you're swiping through a video, just know that you could be influencing the direction of the global economy.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
On the women's side, too, I think you can't sleep on UConn. Paige Becker's dropping 40 the other day. Everyone forgot how good she was in the Kaitlyn Clark madness, but she is absolutely her. As for the men's, I can confidently say that a number one seed is taking home the crowd this year.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
The tech-focused Nasdaq is also officially in correction territory as the Magnificent Seven has labored in Q1. But here are some other storylines as we look to close the chapter on the first three months of the year. First up, European stocks are suddenly hotter than Portuguese, period, period. After years of the US lapping the global pack, the playbook flipped in Q1.
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Tariff uncertainty weighed on American markets, while Europe's promise to boost defense spending sent local stocks flying. The S&P 500 now trails Europe's stocks index by nearly 17 percentage points, the biggest gap ever recorded, according to Bloomberg. One reason why the U.S.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
is now the global laggard, our MVPs, the magnificent seven mega cap stocks, are tossing up more bricks than Tennessee in the first half. Nvidia's down over 20% and Tesla's dropped more than 30%. In all, they have lost nearly $2 trillion in market cap so far in 2025. after driving half the gains for the S&P 500 last year. Still, there have been hints of good news.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Other companies outside the Magnificent Seven are quietly thriving. One ETF excluding the big boys is actually up in 2025, albeit just over 1%. So Neil, I think the best way to sum up Q1 was that it was better spent doing anything other than looking at your brokerage account.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And a little bit more on China. China typically in the past has moved in tandem with emerging markets because it was classified as an emerging market for most of the early 2000s. If you look back in history- Chinese shares rose 63% from 2009 to 2010. The broad gates of emerging markets climbed 103% over that same time. Go back to 2016, 2017. China stocks up 50%. Emerging market shares rallied 46%.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
But now they are out outpacing that emerging markets, you know, widespread ETF. The MSCI China index is up 30% since the end of August, while the gauge of equities in emerging markets is dropped only 7%. So we're finally seeing those two paths depart. And you're right, because it is with this AI hype, plus the car manufacturing hype from BYD. So yeah, China has been a big winner
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Then we'll recap the wobbly first quarter Wall Street has had to kick off the year. It's Monday, March 31st. Let's ride.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Transitioning to the other part of the world, Europe has also been a massive winner. We've spoke about them a lot on the podcast so far. A lot of it is due to Germany kind of changing its tune on its fiscal policy, saying that we're going to invest more into defense spending. Defense stocks have been the MVP over there. And meanwhile... U.S.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
stocks are just having kind of a nightmarish start to the beginning of the year. Tariff threats, you know, inflation sticking around. We had this major inflation reading on Friday that didn't come in. So it came in too hot, actually, which is why, you know, suddenly the U.S. is the I called him the laggard of the global economy, because right now we are.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
I think zooming out here in the early days of this administration, it's definitely paid to hedge your best. The US stock market in general has been a little troubled. So if you've taken a broader view, looped in some more global stocks, looped in some bond holdings, actually, domestic and foreign bond holdings, that classic 60-40 portfolio construction that a lot of people used to have, that's
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
it's almost like nothing has happened this year. That, that is basically pretty level on the year so far. So it's almost like returning to a throwback era of investing before, you know, the AI bubble before, or not bubble, just AI stock started ripping instead of before the magnificent seven, you know, put the entire stock market on its shoulders.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
There was just this classic portfolio construction of 60, 40. And it looks like that has been the best way to kind of hedge off against some of these uncertainties that have been gripping the stock market so
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Well, I think, one, you're totally right that it just offers this resolution for ex-backers who have probably been nervously looking at that announcement. It was discounted heavily just a few months ago because of just this exodus of advertising revenue. Now those backers are basically made whole again at an evaluation, very similar to what Elon Musk originally acquired Twitter for back in 2022.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
But also... I think this has a lot to do with giving Grok, XAIs, you know, LLM a pretty unfair and unique advantage because remember, Grok has been trained on this huge amounts of data culled from X. All those posts go into feeding XAIs, Grok, chatbot, and now they have full control over that data set.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
They can control how they use it, but also they can control what other companies get to train themselves on that data. So it makes a lot of sense giving XAIs
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
And this is just straight out of the Elon Musk playbook. He loves combining his various companies, not just financially like he just did, but also he loves using employees to work across multiple companies. So this is not the first time that we've seen basically him treat his... empire, for lack of a better word, as a single entity where everything is shared across each different company.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So this tie-up we probably should have seen coming. It makes sense on just so many levels. So now it finally happened.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
I mean, it was snowing briefly in Boston. Meanwhile, you and me, Neil, we were golfing in short sleeves. The farmer's stands were coming out in droves. Really drives home what they say about Boston, though. New York prices, Chicago weather, Scranton culture.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
Yeah, there are certainly some damning anecdotes that will go down in infamy from two of those cases that you just mentioned. I mean, Trevor Milton, the founder of Nikola, We'll go down to the Mount Rushmore fraudsters because at one point he was rolling one of their trucks down a hill and passing it off as if it was operating under its own power source.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
That anecdote alone is just an insane, you know, business lore story right there that ended up with him, yeah, being convicted of fraud. And then also do not sleep on what happened at Aussie Media because that is a crazy story. Aussie COO at the time, Samir Rao,
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
allegedly hopped on a call with Goldman Bankers as they were trying to court this big investment from them and pretended to be a YouTube executive. He used a disguised voice to hype up Ozzy's partnership and performance prospect. They were trying to get $40 million out of Goldman.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
So these are two just insane fraud business stories that now both of them are kind of walking free, but just taking a trip down memory lane to reacquaint myself with these two stories. It was truly a wild time in business media.
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Markets Wrap Up a Shaky Q1 & Elon Musk Sells ‘X’ To... 'xAI'
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To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's W-I-S-E dot com slash business. Do you ever feel like you can feel yourself getting older?
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I don't know. It's technically, you know, the dojification of the federal government is saying that we want to reduce the size of, reduce the spend of the government, and yet here you are handing out this pretty large contract to Boeing. But then also the Pentagon has been pushing to give some new entrants like Andrew L. and Palantir more contracts related to
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Software and drones and yet here you are giving a very traditional defense contract or in Boeing a very large deal So Boeing is obviously very happy about it because it's a huge boost for its defense business That represents about a third of the company's revenues but has been like everything else in Boeing a pretty money-losing endeavor over the past several years because in classic Boeing fraction they've had a
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
They've been locked into these money-losing contracts. They've run into cost overruns and delays and whatnot. So definitely a win, though, and you can see it. I encourage you to go look at the stock prices of Lockheed Martin and Boeing when this deal is announced because they diverged.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Ralph Waldo Emerson, two paths diverged in the woods with Lockheed dropping and Boeing going up because obviously upwards of $20 billion is a big deal for Boeing.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Probably not ideal. Unfortunately, I am the same. If I see my phone case start to break down, do I order a new one? No. I convince myself that I can go case free. In cybersecurity, though, waiting until there's a fire means you're already too late. Scrambling to fix a breach is way worse than preventing it in the first place.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
My winner of the weekend is the IPO market, because like a lean cuisine meal, pockets of it are starting to heat up, even while the overall market remains a little chilly. AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave is set to debut soon. Buy now, pay later giant Klarna finally put in its IPO filing last week, while everyone's favorite concert ticket op StubHub also submitted for its filing last Friday.
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The flurry of activity breaks a lull for tech IPOs that dates back to late 2021 when rising interest rates and high inflation scared investors away from riskier assets. Many were hopeful that the incoming administration would usher in a better environment for public debuts, but that hasn't quite been the case so far due to the market roiling trade agenda.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Still, promising debuts from ServiceTitan and Reddit in recent months have inspired some cautious optimism amongst investors, with the trio of Klarna, CoreWeave, and StubHub on deck to test the level of Wall Street's IPO appetite.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I mean, I do think one, StubHub needs to write a thank you note to Taylor Swift because 10% of the group's annual ticket sales came from 2023's heiress tour. So truly was one of those driving forces that turned around the prospects for this company. Another big name that I mentioned was CoreWeave. CoreWeave is looked at as this almost bellwether for the AI IPO scene.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Basically, what they do is that they operate and manage these massive chip farms that instead of outlaying all the money and buying your chips yourself, CoreWeave will do it for you. So if you just want to train your data, you can say, hey, CoreWeave, help me train my data. I don't want to do all the uptake and all the buying of these chips myself. And the
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
There's been few and far attempts of AI IPOs in this AI age we've entered. Obviously, NVIDIA has been ripping, but that's been a public company for decades now. So it's really going to be one of the only data points we have to judge how the market feels about new AI companies. So people are going to be looking very closely at how CoreWeave does.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
And they expect it to be the biggest tech IPO of the year. They want to raise around $2.7 billion. So that will be a good proxy with how much, how hashtag back the IPO market really is.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
With Sophos, you're in complete control with the ability to seamlessly manage your security and integrate hundreds of tools so issues get solved before they're even issues.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
You can look at the Fed's preferred inflation gauge and updated consumer confidence. I will be looking at men's underwear sales and Will Smith's next album to see how strong the economy is. More reliable data points right there.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Oh, man. Our boxers used to launch these very successful infomercials supporting grills, and now they're dropping reality TV shows over on Macs. How far we've risen or fallen, I'd say. I don't know. There's something there.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Some people were a little upset that MLB America's pastime had its opening day in Japan. But you look at these numbers and you see exactly why the league did it. And it looks like it was completely worth it because those numbers are eye popping.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I got seven of my elite eights.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
still alive my final four is looking good as well but I do just want to give a shout out to our executive producer Emily for cooking on the women's side of things she got 31 out of 32 games correct in the first round I was almost calling up Warren Buffett who has that famous 1 million dollar bet that he actually reduced to if you get the entire first round correct Emily you were very close to doing that so shout out to Emily and also congrats to your Maryland Terrapins for pulling it out yesterday
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I'm married to the no-case life these days. But don't be like me. Be proactive, stay protected, and head to Sophos.com to secure your business before trouble arises. That's S-O-P-H-O-S.com. Getting the internet to agree on anything other than clowning that one dude's morning routine is a tough proposition. But right now, a lot of terminally online people are convinced of one thing –
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
We are heading towards a recession. Why? It's not that any specific economic data points are flashing warning signs. Instead, the internet's prognosis is based on recession memes. Search for hashtag recession indicators on social media, and you might see people posting about Lady Gaga's new album giving recession pop vibes or pointing to Jason Sudeikis'
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AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
re-dotting his mustache for a fourth season of Ted Lasso as signs that times are getting tough. While economists may look at yield curves in GDP growth, normal people, half jokingly and half seriously, take their cues from cultural trends, like how many people are spring breaking in Houston versus more exotic locales.
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At the core of these memes is a divergence in so-called soft data like consumer surveys versus hard data like jobs numbers, which are painting contrasting images of the economy right now. Citigroup's chief U.S. economist told Bloomberg, if you just look at hard data, you're looking at what happened a month ago, sometimes even two months.
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Surveys are telling you what people are thinking about the future. So Neil, while the internet has surfaced these semi-serious data points that do speak to a wider anxiety people are feeling, hard economic data like employment numbers, manufacturing output, and inflation suggest the economy is in a relatively healthy spot.
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Yeah, a big one is music because when times get a little tougher, we tend to prefer music that is slower, more introspective, more romantic, has more meaningful lyrics. When times are good, people prefer more upbeat songs, although it's not a perfect system whatsoever because the top song in 2008 was Low by Flo Rida. So maybe people just thought I was talking about the stock market.
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But you are right that there are some uncommon recession indicators that people do like to look at. A lot of these are actual memes, like the Lipstick Index, the Hemline Index. There is actual economic theories behind those things.
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Then, does the BPM of Lady Gaga's new album mean we're on the verge of a recession? We'll dig into the hashtag recession indicator memes sweeping the internet. It's Monday, March 24th. Let's ride.
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But, for instance, people saying Will Smith is getting back in the studio to drop a new album, saying, ah, times must be tough if the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is getting behind the mic again or so. I do think that there is truth in some of these because it does speak to just broader cultural feelings that people are expressing online.
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But yeah, obviously when you look at harder data, we can point to a lot of data points showing that the economy is doing just fine right about now.
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Yeah, what they're seeing right now is just money going up in flames because 45 million subscribers isn't bad. Obviously, it's not Netflix numbers. Obviously, it's not Disney Plus numbers. But the issue is that Apple just spends so much dang money on their content, $5 billion production budget every year. They finally are pulling that back a little bit. They cut off $500 million from that budget.
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But They just can't do anything except for make the highest quality prestige TV. And I'm just going to go through some of the names that have been associated with Apple shows. Natalie Portman had an Apple show. Harrison Ford has an Apple show. Austin Butler, Barry Keoghan, Cate Blanchett, Jake Gyllenhaal, Colin Farrell, Brie Larson. These are the A-listers of A-listers.
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The problem is that if I stopped you and say, you know... You have to answer this question correctly or else you probably wouldn't be able to tell me what any of those stars, what shows they actually starred in. So it's just indicative of the entire, it's condemning the entire project.
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If you are having these great shows coming out and you have 45 million subscribers, but none are really leaving a lasting impact that you would hope given the monetary output that you are expending here.
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It could just be a velocity issue, too, because if you look at the Netflix top 10 page, that is a very fiercely fought over area of real estate that when you open the Netflix app, what's new and fun for this week? And that rotates through very frequently because just the sheer amount of output that Netflix is putting on their platform.
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If you look at Apple TV Plus's top 10 shows, you know what comes in at number one is Severance. Number two is Ted Lasso, though, which hasn't released an episode in almost two years now. So they went the like low volume, very high quality approach. And maybe that's just not the correct approach to resonate with consumers.
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Moving on, George Foreman, the heavyweight boxing champion turned grilling magnate, passed away on Friday at the age of 76, leaving behind a legacy as unlikely as it is impressive. Foreman's exploits in the ring included an Olympic gold medal.
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and an improbable return to his championship-winning ways at the age of 45, but for a generation of home cooks, he was known more for the George Foreman lean, mean, fat-reducing grilling machine than for his right hook. Introduced in the mid-'90s, the portable grills, small enough to fit on your kitchen counter, became synonymous with the charismatic boxing star.
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A generation of infomercials seared the catchphrase, it's so good I put my name on it, into the minds of many an aspiring panini maker. Since its introduction, Over 100 million units have been sold worldwide. Part of the reason for its success was that it was truly a revolutionary product.
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Indoor grilling was not a thing before the Foreman Grill, and its electric-powered design pioneered the smokeless grill kitchen category. Despite Foreman's passing, the grill's legacy is still alive and well today. It remains a bestseller on Amazon and still bears the boxer's name. Neil, without a doubt, one of the most successful celebrity indoors products of all time.
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I mean, I think you're spot on despite the controversies. People might just be a little over these things. I mean, how many uncanny valley CGI resurrections of our childhood favorites can the market stand? Disney is hoping at least one more, though, because we have a live action Lilo and Stitch coming down the pipeline in May.
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My favorite part of the Foreman Grill lore is the fact that the endorsement deal was originally offered to Hulk Hogan. And he technically had a choice between endorsing a blender and a grill, but he didn't pick up the phone altogether. So Salt and Brands went on, which is the parent company of Foreman Grills, went and called George Foreman. He did pick up and he chose to...
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chose to put his name on the grill and my question is have you ever heard of a hulk hogan blender and the answer is no because this is hulk hogan saying george got the lean mean grilling machine i got a blender that when you put double a batteries in it it would fart and then turn off uh so it is just we were one phone call away for that being the hulk hogan lean mean fat reducing grilling machine instead it's the george foreman grilling machine and it's made it all the way to you know the smithsonian museum up next let's hit you with our winners of the weekend
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Technology can help us optimize some of life's most basic tasks. We've even got tech to help us brush our teeth.
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It has a dynamic LED touch bar that lets you choose between 16 different brushing intensities from sensitive to deep clean for up to 15 times more plaque removal versus a manual toothbrush.
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You can even pair your Quip Ultra to the Quip app on your phone to get a personalized look at your oral health.
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So we'll see if this tepid box office reaction was just a Snow White thing or if it speaks to a broader live action slowdown. Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Sophos. Neil, how good are you at solving problems before they actually become problems?
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I knew something like this was coming. The control room put you up to this, but thank you. And, you know, 28 years young, it feels like right now. But thank you for the birthday wishes.
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Oh, you know, probably play a little golf, go out to dinner with my girlfriend. The usual. Keep it low key.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
I mean, the big winners here were the political fringes in Germany. I mean, the far right AFD party doubled its vote share from the last election in 2021, received about 20 percent of the vote. But also, you know, Merz is the big winner as well. Let's talk about who he is. He's actually a corporate lawyer that is a multimillionaire businessman.
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There's always this dissonance when you see things pop up in places that they shouldn't be. Same goes for ads.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
far richer than most of the other chancellors that Germans are used to. He's held pretty big positions on numerous corporate boards. Most notably, he is actually the chairman or has been the chairman of the German arm of BlackRock, the big U.S. investment firm. So he was seen as the more economically literate candidate, which is what Germany wants right now.
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They have been teetering on the edge of a third recession in as many years. Germans are extremely pessimistic about the economy right now. In a recent survey, only a quarter of people judged the economic situation to be good. So the vibes are incredibly dour and bad in Germany right now. And Merz has said the business model of this country is gone.
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The manufacturing powerhouse that it used to be is being threatened by China, being threatened by these low-cost automakers too. So There is a lot on his plate and he wants to attack it by, you know, reduction of taxes, the reduction of bureaucracy and, you know, cutting down on the welfare spending as well.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Yeah, I mean, if you look through his Twitter feed or X feed, he has absolutely been pushing the AFD party as well. So absolutely, you could consider this a winner. Although Mercer's government has said that they don't... see themselves working with the AFD going forward. They are going to try to build a coalition without the AFD party there. So still some questions to hammer out.
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They're still trying to form a government here that can attack some of these big economic issues that Germany has been facing. My winner of the weekend is facial hair. Not because I suddenly gained the ability to actually grow a beard in my 28th year, but because the New York Yankees are finally reversing a nearly 50-year-old policy in allowing its players to grow some facial furniture.
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Now the Yankees have long had the most famous grooming reel in professional sports. The team requires players to be clean-shaven and only allows mustaches, no beards, no long hair past the collar. The tradition dates back to 1973. when its owner, George Steinbrenner, implemented the rule as part of his vision for a disciplined, corporate-style team identity.
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Which is what makes LinkedIn ads so helpful. It lets you target and filter your audience by industry, company, and role, so you can cut down on ad waste and avoid a KFC in London sort of scenario.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
But George's son, Hal, who now runs the team, made the shocking announcement to end the tradition, calling it outdated and one that has serious consequences for the organization. What are some of those serious consequences? Beyond nicking your Adam's apple while shaving, the dogmatic rule could potentially hurt the club's chances of retaining or signing players.
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Some players really like their beards and... And things like that can factor into the calculus that goes along with deciding where to play.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
It's just in right now. Yeah. Like beards are trendy right now. I mean, actually, George Steinbrenner said or Hal Steinbrenner said, look at J.D. Vance right now. Like he's the vice president of the United States. He has a beard. So you are absolutely right. Like beards are the in fashion right now.
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I mean, I thought you were going to say Taylor Swift has a beard. I was like, ah, that is news to me. This announcement, you could read two ways. One, probably it was an outdated rule that did deserve to be updated because it is a little draconian and you shouldn't be able to control what people are growing on their faces. But the other side of the rule is that it did have
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
you know, real impact on the team's fortunes and the team's ability to sign free agents. Because, you know, what the saying is, like, look good, feel good, play good. If some players think that they look their best with a beard, that means they're feeling the best.
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And that means if you're feeling good and you're playing better, that could lead to, you know, more success and millions of dollars of revenue. So depending on how serious you want to take the role, like, potentially this does... shift the calculus and get them over, potentially get the Yankees over the hump. Or you can just say it was a dumb rule to begin with.
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Why are we even talking about it in the first place?
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
It's all about the mojo. Now let's see what the week ahead has to offer other than hopefully some warmer weather here in New York. After a weekend where investors took a step back to lick their wounds following the market's worst day of 2025 on Friday, we have Nvidia's Q4 earnings on deck this Wednesday.
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The world's second most valuable company lost $600 billion in value after DeepSeek's inexpensive AI model debuted last month. But CEO Jensen Huang sounds unfazed by it. The chipmaker is expected to show a 72% rise in revenue year over year and offer guidance for the supply and demand of its chips that could swing the market in either direction.
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That's what I was thinking. I feel like we missed peak NVIDIA earnings. It was like a few months ago, the watch parties were in, but now, you know, we're not seeing like triple digit growth anymore. Still, I do think that whatever guidance it gives about how it sees, you know, demand for its chips going forward, that does influence the market.
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We saw when DeepSeek went out, it led to a huge market wipeout. So I think that we still, it still has the power to, you know,
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The Fed's favored measure of inflation, the PCE price index, is out on Friday. Consumers are currently walking on eggshells when it comes to inflation. Americans' expectations for inflation over the next five years is the highest it's been since 1995 due to the looming threat of tariffs against key trade partners.
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That lack of confidence coupled with a hot inflation report may present a dangerous concoction for investors and consumers alike.
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That was intentional. Everything we do here is intentional.
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I'm impressed, and I hope the listeners caught it as well. Finally, what feels like the longest and most problematic Academy Awards season will come to a conclusion on Sunday night. ABC is giving everyone an early start time of 7 p.m. Eastern for a second year in a row, so no one has to lose sleep over Conclave Avenue. Absolutely sweeping the field.
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Conan O'Brien is charged with manning the ship for three hours in his role as a first-time host for Hollywood's Biggest Night and any early Oscars predictions.
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He's done a good job. I'm excited for Conan as well. We were talking about Conclave beforehand. That, I think, was both of our favorite best fictions. That's the only one I saw. So I think that is by default my favorite. But did you see any of the other ones or just Conclave?
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If you thought you had a case of the Sunday scaries this weekend, federal workers almost certainly had it worse. 2.3 million government employees checking their email today will be staring down a message from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management asking them to share five bullet points detailing what they accomplished in the last week.
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Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchanan Oogoo is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup forgot the password to their work email, so it's been so long since they've logged in. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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The effort was spearheaded by Elon Musk and came with a warning on X that any employee who fails to respond would be treated as having resigned, only adding to the uncertainty. For Elon and Doge, the email is meant to spot, quote, outright fraud from people on the government payroll who aren't actually working.
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But multiple agencies and unions have pushed back, instructing their workers to hold off on hitting that reply button. New FBI Director Kash Patel told employees not to answer, saying the Bureau would use its own procedures to review employee performance. NOAA and NSA employees were told the same. The State Department is also on the no-reply train. The email told employees to respond by 11.59 p.m.
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ET tonight. So as that deadline draws near, it set up a high stakes standoff, putting Musk and Trump's attempts to aggressively downsize the federal government against agency heads who aren't sure how to proceed. And a lot of weight contained in one tiny email.
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Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
The issue people have had is that the federal government is not necessarily a tech company. You can't treat it in the same way. Also, just logistically, some federal workers are on leave right now, whether it's sick leave, parental leave, so they can't access their emails.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Some of them work in far-flung places that don't even have email access, so do they get automatically fired just because they can't actually load their email online? Others like the CFPB, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, their workforce has recently been placed on leave and have been instructed not to work. So do they have any accomplishments to report? No.
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Today, federal employees are scrambling after an email over the weekend asked them to show their work.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
So there's just been all these edge cases where everyone's a little confused as to how you're supposed to approach this if, one, you can't look at your email, or two, you're already on leave right now. So definitely some logistical issues, not to mention maybe some of the legal issues along with this email as well.
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According to most federal employment lawyers, Elon Musk can't force federal employees to resign. Intempting to do so would amount to, you know, an involuntary termination. So workers who are affected by an involuntary termination could file a claim, a legal claim challenging that action. So that looks to be a pathway that they could obviously take.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
But then also, let's just take the viewpoint of what you know, Elon and Doge and Trump are trying to accomplish with this, is that from their viewpoint, this is a very easy test you should be able to pass. If you are actually working, you should be able to, in five minutes, you know, write down five bullet points of what you've been working on. He said on X that there was a low bar to meet it.
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It should take less than five minutes to write. And that was the same energy that he's brought to a lot of his companies that he brought to Twitter. So yes, you can see his supporters saying, yeah, this should be something that every private sector employee has probably faced in their tenure. Why shouldn't public sector employees be faced and held to the same standards?
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It's Monday, February 24th. Let's ride. Happy Monday, everyone, and welcome to the show. Neil is still enjoying his much-deserved break, so Anne will be helping steer the ship for the upcoming week. And since we're going to be hanging out for the next few days, do you mind giving our listeners a quick bio? Who is Anne Barry, and how did you end up in this chair across from me?
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Yeah, I mean, everybody loves reading the annual shareholder letter from Warren Buffett. It is a tradition in finance circles, unlike any other. The cash pile is always something that grabs headlines because it just continues to grow bigger. Remember, his cash and treasury bills, it's sitting at $330 billion plus right now. But I do like that he was like, chill out with all this cash pile talk.
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I know you guys love writing headlines about this. But again, the vast majority of our company is tied up in equities. He still very much believes in equities as the path to growing Berkshire Hathaway. The fact remains that the stock market is trading at near-record highs. Valuations are elevated compared to historical averages.
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it's very hard to find a deal for a value investor like Warren Buffett. Everyone tends to get in a tizzy about this cash pile, but Warren's like, hey, just chill out. We're looking for deals. You know how we operate here. We look for good deals. We're not just going to splash out this cash on something willy-nilly. Write your headlines, but you know what?
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We're still fine with the cash position that we're sitting in right now.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Mm-hmm. It is remarkable. It speaks to the fact that they have a piece of 189 businesses. So that diversification, I mean, it kind of is emblematic of the U.S. economy at this point. It's like a proxy for the U.S. economy. That diversification allows them to have the majority of their business or the over half their businesses diversified.
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actually report negative earnings that fell, and still on the year report a pretty solid year overall. We do need to talk about this tax bill, too. In 2024, Berkshire paid $26.8 billion. That's the most of any U.S. company in history. It actually amounts to 5% of the total American corporate income taxes paid in 2024.
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Warren Buffett said the company now has paid in aggregate more than $101 billion. billion of income tax directly to the U.S. Treasury. And he's not mad about it. That was the kind of sentiment you got reflected in this letter is that he's like, spend it wisely, you know, spend it on maybe the less fortunate.
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But I'm not mad about paying this tax bill, which kind of goes against what a lot of other corporations would probably tell if they had a $26 billion tax bill. So he was kind of trying to position himself as saying like, Hey, not all of these mega one trillion dollar corporations hate taxes. We actually like paying them as long as, you know, Uncle Sam uses the money appropriately.
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He loves Japanese trading houses. He thinks they're undervalued compared to kind of Western counterparts. He loves them because they kind of check all the boxes that Berkshire Hathaway wants to check. They're cash generating businesses. They have this very strong global presence. They have steady dividends. They're very conservatively managed. And so that is just something that Berkshire loves.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
That's music to their ears. And they have been down a little bit in recent months, these Japanese trading houses, which just... Backing up a minute, these are these massive conglomerates that handle everything from global trade, resource procurement, logistics, investments across multiple industries. They're very diversified.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
And he says that these Japanese positions are ones that they'll hold for decades. So again, all of the positions that Berkshire usually takes are held over a long time frame. So these Japanese trading house positions are no different. After two years of insane demand for the active ingredient in injectable weight loss drugs, semaglutide, the FDA has declared the shortage over.
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Ozempic, Wegovy, and other drugs in the blockbuster category have been in short supply around the world as their popularity has skyrocketed. When certain medicines face shortages, the FDA can make it possible for other companies to make their own off-brand copycat versions of brand-name drugs.
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That proved to be a boon for digital health companies like Hims and Herds, who have been prescribing compounded semaglutide in the midst of the shortage. Patients flocked to the non-FDA-approved medications because of the cost difference.
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Hims and Herds sells their medicine for a few hundred dollars compared to brand drugs from Novo Nordisk, which clock in at around $1,000 per month without insurance. But now that gravy train looks to be ending. The FDA said compounding drug makers have 60 to 90 days to close up shop, which sent hims and hers stock plunging 26% just before the weekend.
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A big shakeup in the GLP-1 drug industry here, Anne.
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Yeah. No, it has been an absolute phenomenon. We've talked about it a lot on this show over the year, but I also just want to dig into this practice of compounding drugs. Typically, compounding drugs is a very normalized and very commonplace practice to make these custom versions of brand name drugs.
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Usually, they're personalized for patients, which means if someone is allergic to a specific ingredient in a drug, a pharmacist can tweak the formula a little bit without getting hit with IP claims from the drug maker. But compounding is also allowed when you are facing shortages like has been happening with semaglutide, that key ingredient.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
And so these, you know, digital pharmacies like hims and hers jump in and say like, hey, guys, like we can make the same drug for a much cheaper price, which has sent their share price skyrocketing. Ironically, on our Friday show, we named Hims and Hers our stock of the week because of its great performance over the last week.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Literally after this episode published, this news came out, and Hims and Hers stock absolutely tanked. So sorry for the Morning Brew Daily curse right there. But I do think it just shows how important it is to have access to this fast-growing market, like you said, that has just taken over so many of your friends and so many people you know are on this class of drugs right now.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Anne hosts a lot of shows. She's very talented. I highly recommend checking out both of the franchises that you're a part of, but thank you so much. You're a natural fill-in from Neil. You look great over there, so I'm excited for our week ahead. Now, a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Anne, have you ever been traveling abroad and seen a distinctly American restaurant?
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Up next, it's our winners of the weekend. Have you taken our morning market trivia quiz yet? Top scorers will receive a custom prize, a $200 Amex gift card, a newsletter feature, and bragging rights for life.
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Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
If you're itching to shout out the answer, just do the next best thing and go to morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to test your stuff with a morning market trivia quiz. Like I said, top scorers will receive prizes and a feature in the Morning Brew newsletter. I scored 12 out of 15. I got you by one, 13 out of 15.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Head on over to morningbrew.com slash morning-market-trivia to see if you can beat us. Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of leaders in your career. What traits do you think are most important?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement and visceral power.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The pair of now infamous astronauts are set to return to Earth after spending three-fourths of a year aboard the International Space Station, far exceeding their originally planned mission due to technical issues with Boeing's Starliner capsule. NASA insists that the pair has not been stuck this whole time, but were intentionally kept hanging in zero Gs for technical and budgetary reasons.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The pair's replacement Uber home was actually delivered by SpaceX last year, whose Dragon capsule has been in orbit for months now. But a separate SpaceX Crew Dragon arrived at the ISS yesterday morning with two new astronauts clearing the way for them to head home. A splashdown off Florida's coast is expected later this week, as long as the weather holds.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Yes, but knowing that if I did, Sophos would be there to provide enterprise-level tech and real-world expertise to keep it safe. It helps me sleep better at night. Ever heard of putting the cart before the horse, Toby? I don't see how that is relevant here. As long as I have my cybersecurity figured out, the business part will come in no time.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Neil, just to reiterate how insane this trip was, Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing's first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
One more pessimistic take is the fact that we talked about budgetary concerns. So what is the budget for keeping two astronauts in space, you know, nine months instead of nine days as was originally planned. They're not getting any overtime or additional compensation above their usual salary for the extra months that they've spent working from space.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
This is according to a former retired astronaut who's familiar with how the government structures these contracts. So, I don't know if maybe if you imagine you were meant to be on a project for a week and then instead you ended up working in nine months. You're right. It is space.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It is a very cool place to work, but they're not getting that overtime pay that you might expect given their situation.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Then Klarna filed for its long-awaited IPO. Will investors buy now or wait until later? It's Monday, March 17th. Let's ride.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Yeah, people were saying that when they saw the amount of applications roll in, there was gasps in the room at some of the top law schools. They couldn't believe the numbers were as high as they were. I was doing a little bit of digging and just reading people's reactions as to why they think it is. Obviously, there's all those factors. Yeah, tough job market, election year.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
These are all things that pull people into the law profession. But the changes to the LSAT were probably the biggest thing here. They took away the logic game section, which for a lot of people were... It was just a brutal section for most of the test takers. So now people are saying, I'll take the LSAT.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Now that this horrible section is gone, I'll give it another shot, which is why you saw so many applicants because you might as well give, if the test got much easier, you might as well give it another shot. Some people are saying their scores jumped 15, 20 points on this revised test. So I do think that was a big factor with why we're seeing these massive application numbers.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Klarna, the Swedish fintech you use for buy now, pay later purchases, is finally going public. After years of anticipation and valuation swings and lots of lattes bought in installments, Klarna filed its IPO prospectus on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker Klar.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Yeah, I mean, if you're talking about an economy right now that is gripped by a lot of uncertainty, one thing seems pretty certain, and that is interest rates will stay where they are generally. The wait and see approach has been something that we've seen echoed a lot from Jerome Powell because there's just so many economic policies that are up in the air right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
So it's very hard to make an interest rate decision before you understand which tariffs will go into effect and which won't, which are just bargaining chips and which are not. So wait and see is the name of the game right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Right. It is one thing that you see these movies do when you invest so much money into creating something like this is you start selling tickets like a month in advance, a month and a half in advance. You try to start recouping your investment.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Right now, Fandango only started selling Snow White tickets just 10 days before its release, which just shows how much Disney has kind of shrunk this movie from the spotlight. It had this very toned down opening premiere. So
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It is one of those things where it could end up being a big egg on the face moment for what should have been just, yeah, pretty much an easy tentpole franchise for Disney to prop up.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
I'm very excited right now. And I know a lot of you listening probably aren't sports fans, but do fill out a bracket. And you might be thinking, what is my chances of snagging that elusive perfect bracket? It's one in 120 billion. So good luck to all you. Maybe flipping a coin is the way to go.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Klarna was founded in Sweden in 2005, but became a household name during the pandemic when BNPL helped fuel lockdown-induced online shopping. But like a lot of its peers, Klarna suffered from rising interest rates and a VC bubble bursting. In 2022, it raised funding at just $6.5 billion valuation. an 85% drop from the $45.6 billion it was valued at a year before.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
I mean, it truly is the era's tour of Japan right now. Otani is the biggest face in baseball right now. MLB is trying to expand its global reach, so it makes a ton of sense for them to do a little stint over in Japan to start the season.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
I am glad as well, but I will caution you because New York actually has a lot more seasons than just four. There's winter, there's full spring, there's second winger winter, and then there's spring of deception.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
And I, right now I feel like we're in the spring of deception because we got some 60 degree days, but I think we're going to get plunged back into one more winter before spring is actually.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
I want you to share the podcast with someone who is considering a law school. It might be good to arm them with some facts as to what they are up against.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
But recently, Klarna has bounced back, bringing in $2.8 billion in revenue last year and net profits of $21 million, a sharp turnaround from heavy losses just a year earlier. Its one-year makeover has given it the confidence to explore this long-rumored IPO, where it is aiming for a valuation of about $15 billion.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Neil, this is a company that arguably might be more interesting for what's going on behind the scenes. Klarna has embraced AI wholeheartedly, replacing 700 full-time customer service agents with an in-house AI chatbot, as well as multiple large SaaS vendors. And now it's riding that increased efficiency into the public markets.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Right, and I do think that he is not someone who shies away from controversy either. I mean, saying that you're replacing 700 full-time contract employees to save $40 million annually, that's not usually a popular talking point, but to him, that's exactly where he wants to take this company down.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Now, some people who have worked at Klarna before have pushed back and said that, hey, maybe this narrative around AI is more of a gimmick than actually something he truly believes in, because what's a great way to cover up your workforce dwindling from 5,000 in 2023 to 3,500 by the end of 2024? To say that, no, it's not because we wanted to lay people off.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It's because we're replacing them with much more efficient AI. So It's definitely, he's putting his neck out on the line saying this is what we think the future of business is. And you can't really argue with the results. It did have a remarkable turnaround in profitability right around the time where AI became big. So maybe he is putting his money where his mouth is.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
That's probably the C plot. I mean, you've already taken us through the A plot and B plot. The C plot is just the health of the overall IPO market, which right now, there's a lot of volatility. There's some plunging share prices we've seen earlier in the year. So it's been a pretty cold market, which a lot of people thought that under
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
This current administration, the IPO market was going to come roaring back to life. There are signs of life. Klarna is a big one. There's another company, CoreWeave. They operate data centers. They're filing for an IPO that should value the company at more than $35 billion.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It's been a rocky start to the year for the IPO market, but Klarna is one of those names that could turn around the whole year if it goes well.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Right. Some of the reasons why the dollar is weak, and one, it has been those steep increase in tariffs, but also, it is what's happening in Europe that is causing this surge of optimism for that particular economy, which has driven the dollar down sharply. The Wall Street Journal's dollar index has declined seven of the past nine weeks. And the dollar affects so many things.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Obviously, global investment flows is a big one. But also, you said the direction of transatlantic tourism, if the dollar becomes weaker, certainly maybe more Europeans are going to head our way instead of vice versa, which has been the status quo for the last decade or so. So what are some implications of a weaker dollar?
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
One, it might make imports from places like China more expensive, which could potentially actually lead to a boost of inflation, which could make it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
We could not be further away from those early aughts of the year. But I have to call you out for a second, Neil. You are wearing absolutely zero green right now. Just a startling lack of holiday whimsy on display right here. Plus, you are very vulnerable to a leprechaun's pinch, which is actually the reason you're supposed to wear green in the first place.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
This is actually just a stated policy goal of the Trump administration right now. They could actually go as far as to seek currency agreements or policy shifts that would intentionally weaken the dollar to help U.S. exporters, to help U.S. manufacturing. This is something that has happened before.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
In 1985, there was a group of governments that got together and agreed to something called the Plaza Accord. That was against this similar backdrop where U.S., France, Japan, the U.K., and actually West Germany at the time all agreed to collectively devalue the dollar against their currencies because they thought the strong dollar was hurting the global economy.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
And that was against a very similar backdrop, which was high inflation, high interest rates in a very strong dollar. So it's a very intentional policy decision by this current administration. Spirit Airlines is back from the dead.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
The budget airline known for its bare-bones flight experience said it has finalized its debt restructuring and is ready to emerge as a beautiful yellow butterfly from Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What was the first thing it did after finding itself on more solid financial footing? Pick a fight with one of its rivals.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Remember when Southwest shocked the world last week by announcing plans to ditch its bags-fly-free policy, a decision that was maligned by analysts and customers alike? Well, Spirit CEO Ted Christie decided to jump onto the dog pile as well, saying, I think it's going to be painful for a little bit as they find their footing, and we're going to take advantage of that.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
But even as Christie is throwing shade at Southwest Way, Spirit still has some ducks it has to get in a row. It still reported a net loss of $1.2 billion last year, more than double the year prior. And it's been the subject of not one, but two doomed merger attempts, courtesy of Frontier Air and JetBlue. So yes, Neil,
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Spirit has got some pep in its step, but it's not like it's just smooth sailing ahead.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
And you did mention that Spirit is still a lot smaller than its rival. It's definitely punching up right now when it's going after Southwest. Southwest averages 3,600 flights per day. Spirit averages just 700 per day. So this is definitely one of those things where I think it's more of a marketing stunt in a way.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
According to folklore, green makes you invisible to leprechauns, which is a fun fact that I bet will hit a lot harder later today when everyone is having a good time at a bar. Now a word from our new sponsor, Sophos. Ooh, I am excited to tell you all about Sophos.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Although I will say that a lot of airline CEOs have come out and say, we do think Southwest customer base who were attracted to those bags fly free policy is up for grabs right now because that was the main reason people were We're opting for Southwest as well as, you know, it is the U.S. 's largest domestic carrier.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
But I think that all these CEOs are licking their chops and saying, all right, this is a very disgruntled fan base right now. Of course, I'm going to go out in interviews and say, we're coming for your customer base. Come check out Spirit because, you know, a lot of people are mad. I mean, this is a little bit of an exaggeration, but these are both Texas-based enterprises.
Morning Brew Daily
Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
Luka Doncic trading to the Lakers and Southwest getting rid of their bags fly free policy. created similar levels of fury and uproar from specific customer bases. So of course you're going after these angry customers right now. Up next, it is our winners of the weekend.
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Klarna Wants to Replace Humans with AI & Spirit Leverages Southwest Debacle?
It's because I'm wearing green, Neil. Holiday spirit never goes out of style. My winner of the weekend are NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmer. who are about to be reacquainted with a little thing we call gravity.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And we hope you learned something and maybe reminisce about some of the funniest sketches and characters. But first, a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Neil, were you scared of the dark as a kid?
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
You can point to success from Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Bill Hader, and Jason Sudeikis when it comes to their TV work, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who thinks that they are or even were movie stars. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph were probably in the last place
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Big comedy that starred SNL cast members in Bridesmaids, but that mainly served as a launching pad for Melissa McCarthy, who wasn't an SNL cast member, even though she certainly felt like she was. So, Neil, a lot of SNL's relevance in the past came from reliably pumping out these movie stars, something that doesn't really happen anymore these days.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Yeah, Judd Apatow, who is a comedy director, has said that maybe it's an industry problem where the industry is no longer giving this next generation of comedy stars the option to even star. He rails against the industry for relying on familiar IP, relying on established stars over giving someone a chance to try something new.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And then he called out movies like The Hangover, which featured Zach Galifianakis, who came out of nowhere. He was a nobody before then. And then pretty much everyone in the 40-year-old version was brand new as well. So it is just kind of a shift that we've seen in the movie landscape.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
It's probably not as much to do with the fact that the people on the show aren't as funny as they were in the past, even though that's something that a lot of people like to say. So it probably is quasi-industry related, which is why we're not seeing this reliable pipeline turning out people anymore.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
I was terrified because who likes being in the dark?
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And then another thing that it kind of ushered in was this era of trying to take down viral clips because at that time, you know, there weren't great laws about what copyright on the internet was going to turn out to be. And so NBC was trying to orchestrate this huge takedown of all the illegal reproductions of that clip. So that also ushered in just kind of a new era of online media.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
I have to talk about another, you know, Andy Samberg short with Justin Timberlake. Are we going to have to beef? I'm not going to say the whole thing, but that is a great segue. It's D in a box, which was very relevant, but for a completely different reason. The song's language, which says D 16 times, caused the FCC to step in at the last minute and bleep it on...
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
air because the FCC is in charge of policing the airways and making sure no foul language is said out there. But then NBC uploaded the uncensored version after the show aired. So it was kind of the first attempt that we saw a show circumvent FCC censorship to try to broadcast their comedy out onto the internet.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So it was interesting to see how they were ducking and weaving to get this satirical song out there. So Lonely Island is responsible for a lot of the modern internet that we know today, even though probably a lot of people didn't actually even know that sort of history.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
With the right targeting tools, you can finally stop wasting spend on people who don't want or need what you're offering.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Finally, let's finish our SNL 50th anniversary show with some fun facts you can drop to impress your friends. Any show that lasts 50 years has some juicy nuggets. Neil, you won the pre-show cold open contest, so you're up first.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Thank you for those, Neil. The show has a ban list. Two of the more prominent names on them are Adrian Brody for doing this unscripted, bizarre Jamaican accent, and then Steven Seagal for being so difficult to work with that Lorne Michaels called him the worst host ever.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Some of those are disputed, but it's good that Lorne Brody has said to his knowledge that he's not actually banned, but I have also never been invited back on. And then I got a great Larry David anecdote for you, Neil. Larry David quit, then came back like nothing happened before Seinfeld. Larry David was a writer for SNL in the early 80s, but he hated kind of the work environment.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He didn't like that his sketches weren't making it to air. So one night he just quit mid-season, but then he realized that he really needed the job, so he pulled like George Costanza, and just showed up the next Monday as if nothing had happened. No one said anything, and he finished the season. That is just a great fact from Larry David and SNL lore.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And then finally, the highest rated show in the show's history on IMDb was hosted by Eddie Murphy with the musical guest of Lizzo. Got an 8.8 back in 2019. So you can say maybe the show is peaking in recent years, or you could just say that a lot more people were rating shows on IMDb in the 2019s, 2020s than back in the show's history. And I also have the lowest rated show ever.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
That is Steven Seagal and Michael Bolton back in 1975. That is a 5.4 on IMDb.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Share this episode with someone who always sends you really funny videos that just aren't that funny. We all have that person in your life sending you memes, sending you SNL sketches that just don't hit. In return, send them this episode that certainly will hit.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Saturday Night Live aged gracefully into middle age over the weekend, hosting a 50th anniversary celebration so big it ditched Saturday altogether and moved it to Sunday. It spanned over three hours and brought back everyone from iconic alums like Tina Fey and Will Ferrell to OG. Thank you.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Great show today, Neil. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
It's part of the movie star promotional circuit, as proven by Timothee Chalamet's recent stint as host and musical guest to promote his Bob Dylan biopic. It still draws millions of views a week. Last season, the average episode received 7.2 million views, and most sketches rack up millions more on YouTube and TikTok. Its sketches have turned into enduring cultural touchstones.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
You'd probably still say, buh-bye, getting off a plane, consider living in a van down by the river, or ask for more cowbell. But Neil, despite that lengthy track record, you'll inevitably hear a chorus of SNL is dying, SNL isn't funny, and more whenever you bring it up amongst friends. Whatever your thoughts on it, 50 years is 50 years. This show has stuck around.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And I do just want to visit some of those conversations about SNL is dying because we've all said it at one point. Like, I remember when SNL was so much funnier back in this day. Lorne Michaels has a joke about this. He says, generally, when people talk about the best cast, I think, well, that's when they were in high school.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So it really is one of those things where people just reminisce fondly on their childhoods and they associate their cast members with that era. But also the current conversations regarding SNL's humor, they're not original by any means. And the 2000s audiences were saying, ah, man, I love the 70s, 80s, and 90s. The 2010s audiences then turned around and praised the 2000 audiences or cast members.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So it is just one of those things where it's almost a good thing that SNL isn't funny anymore in the current landscape because that means humor is evolving. They're trying to push the needle a little bit. Change is afoot. And that is a good thing when it comes to comedies.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
A deep dive into the past, present, and uncertain future of the comedy juggernaut. Tape from New York, it's Morning Brew Daily.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
But again, I'm going to toss something right back in your face. Kamala Harris went on SNL pre-election. That cold open got 11 million views on YouTube. Millions more, obviously, when it aired live on television. But then you look at something like a Donald Trump appearance on Joe Rogan. That got 55 million views on YouTube.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
For every sentence that you can say, oh, it still is this cultural touchpoint, maybe it has been passed by other mediums like podcasts, like YouTube shows. So again, there is fodder on whichever side of the debate that you want to fall on. But what is undebatable is the fact that it has lasted over 50 years. So-
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Yeah, and honestly, let's relive that first show, too, because, you know, it wasn't great. It was a little half-formed at the time. What it did introduce the people to was this idea of a cold open, just dropping people right into the scene. It also introduced the idea of breaking the fourth wall.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
I mean, in that first-ever sketch, Chevy Chase in a headset comes on stage and announces live from New York, it's Saturday Night Live. From Saturday Night. From Saturday Night, yeah. It was a different name at the time. And then also, who was the first SNL host? Because hosts are a huge part of the SNL conversation. It was comedian George Carlin.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He didn't actually participate in any of the skits or the sketches because, one, he didn't like acting, and two, didn't really like being part of a team. But then that's when Lorne kind of had this aha moment that says, wait a second, we definitely do need to fold these hosts into our cast. But I do think it was crazy how many mainstay SNL segments were introduced in that first episode.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
I already mentioned Cold Open. I already mentioned Live from New York. But there's also a first SNL parody commercial. We've all seen one of those. That has become just an enduring format throughout the history. And then also, Weekend Update right from the first episode was a thing. And that is still probably some people's highlights of the show to this day.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So you've watched the show over the past 50 years. You will see some stuff that you recognize in modern television today.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And Lorne Michaels, I mean, he is one of those people that you just have to refer... referred to by a single name and people know who it is. I mean, you can just call him Lorne and most people from the industry just understand who you're talking about. But it is such an interesting role that he occupies because you can't micromanage a troop of comedy people.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
But some Al Franken has famously said that They needed a leader. Someone has to lead the show, and Lorne Michaels has been that figure. I do think it was fascinating how much control he does actually exert over the final product. He is the one who picks the final sketches that make it onto the show that you see, and it's not always the funniest sketches.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
He has to consider all these other factors, like is the host going to be happy? Am I fitting everyone in? He's got a team that he has to coach up. Are these sketches going to play all across America? They can't just be relevant to New York City. They have to be relevant to the entirety of all 50 states. Is there enough topical material that makes the show continue to be relevant?
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
So once you start thinking about everything that is going through Lorne Michaels' mind, you start to have a greater appreciation for what he's been able to pull off over 50 years.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
But has it maintained that grip today in 2025? In today's special holiday episode, we are going to piggyback on SNL's 50th birthday bash to dive deep into this cultural phenomenon, exploring the leadership mind of its ringleader, Lorna Michaels, its history as a movie star factory, and whether it's been overshadowed in today's frenzied media landscape. It's a ton of fun.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And the question does become, though, because we're at 50 years now. Lorne Michaels is over 80 years old. Who can succeed him? Who is the anointed successor to the throne? Some of the names that have been thrown out are Tina Fey, Seth Meyers. But a lot of people are just kind of looking at everything he does and going, I don't know who else can pull this off.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
That's how synonymous and that's how important he is making this show what it is.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
It's making me think we should go to cue cards a little bit, Neil. I think we just adopt everything that Lauren wants to do and make this show, you know, live from New York. It's Morning Brew Daily Show. Now let's go to a quick commercial break. Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of strong leaders in your career.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability of sophisticated refinement and visceral power. And you can build a Range Rover Sport that matches your leadership style at Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com. That's LandRoverUSA.com. Do you ever feel like you can feel yourself getting older? Literally all the time.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
That's why they created MitoPure, a clinically proven healthy aging breakthrough. MitoPure increases your energy at the source, improving muscle strength, and giving you the power to bounce back from your daily activities.
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How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
Want to feel aging differently? Get 10% off your first order of Mito Pure at timeline.com slash morningbrewdaily. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E dot com slash morningbrewdaily. Another reason why SNL carried so much juice throughout the years was that Lorne Michaels' show was pumping out movie stars left and right.
Morning Brew Daily
How ‘SNL’ Adapted to Changing Media After 50 Years
National Lampoon's Animal House turned John Belushi into a comedy A-lister, and from then on, the gates were opened. Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Billy Crystal, Ben Schiller, Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, They all dominated the box office at one point or the other from the mid-70s into the mid-2000s. Now, the pipeline has certainly started to leak these days.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And it's not just the NBA. The NBA is definitely the poster child because their ratings have been falling off a cliff this year because, you know, watching eight players on the Celtics jack up more threes than Steph Curry did during his, you know, record breaking seasons a few seasons ago. It's just not that fun to watch. Like the mid range jumper is gone.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
As for Hawaii, it is close enough to the equator as is, so it gets plenty of sunlight without shifting time, so no need to go around changing clocks twice a year. So if you needed any extra motivation to move to Hawaii or Arizona, add the stasis of their clocks to the list. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
People call the NBA a solved game at this point, but it's certainly not just an NBA problem. The MLB also went through this same crisis where the game just started getting dominated by a few things. Strikeouts, walks, and home runs, which all of those, what do they have in common? The ball is not being put in play, so there's no defensive plays to be made.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
So they have done some things like institute a pitch clock. They've banned these extreme defensive shifts to try to bring some more balance back to the game. Even the NFL football, which you think is in a very healthy spot, is dealing with a little bit of an analytics crisis of their own. No one really runs the ball anymore.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
I mean, sorry, Saquon Barkley and the Eagles, which actually did run the ball a lot. They're seeing more passing attempts. There's more fourth down attempts, two-point conversions. A lot of it has improved the game, but it's kind of on a knife's edge that if you realize that, wait, our most effective plays are passing, then the game does become more one-dimensional again.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
affecting all of the sports leagues. NBA probably is getting the worst of it right now.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
My winner of the weekend is a fiery co-host of a popular morning show. No, it's not Neil Fryman. I'm talking about NBA commentator Stephen A. Smith. The polarizing media personality got a bag from ESPN inking a five-year, $100 million contract extension that makes him the network's highest paid talent ever.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
That is a 67% raise over his last contract and will raise his salary higher than 80% of NBA players and every single player in the NHL. Smith is ESPN's golden goose, hosting its highly rated morning debate show First Take, which is the most popular non-new show on cable in its time slot this year.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
He's also cranking out his podcast, The Stephen A. Smith Show, that regularly brings in hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube. Neil, probably the best way to put Smith's influence in perspective is that he has stirred presidential candidacy rumors after he made appearances on The View and Sean Hannity late last year. The dude is a media tour de force.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
So not sure if you guys know this, but Neil and I get the same exact smoothie every single day for breakfast.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
I would love to see the sports analytics nerds that we talked about in the previous segment break down what Stephen A. 's impact is on the network because he really is the embodiment of the new era of creator. He'll show up on a morning show that you can watch on cable, but he'll also show up all over your social media feeds, on YouTube, on his own show, on talk shows.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
He's getting into courtside fights with LeBron James that drives an entire media cycle. And he's kind of just this omnipresent figure in sports. And ESPN figures that it's probably better to have him in their stable, then let him walk to someone else.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Truly the Gilligan's Island of space exploration. I was looking into the longest space fights overall because nine months sounds like a really long time. The overall record is held by a Russian cosmonaut, 437 days, and that was back in the mid-1990s. The longest American trip in history was 371 days in space. It was this guy named Frank Rubio.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And I'm talking every single day since the podcast launched, which is over two years ago at this point.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
He initially thought the mission would be six months long, but the spacecraft that he was aboard began leaking, cooling, and NASA said it couldn't make a normal return to Earth. So it feels like a similar situation to what Sunni and Butch Williams have been going through.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Yeah, it's not that it's on the ballot right now. They're not voting for independence, but the way that Greenland votes will kind of offer some clues as to how they feel about it. So you're right that it is funny that we're all kind of tuning in for Greenland. I don't think anyone has thought about the Greenland election. Here we are.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
They are, you know, important when it comes to all these different nations trying to snag a piece of Greenland. So we will be paying attention.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Oh, I thought you were going to say, I already know who's going to win. And I was curious this year. I mean, I think you think Maryland. My take is the SEC is just monstrous this year. They've turned from a football conference to a basketball conference. So one of my winners is coming from that conference, even though the bracket isn't out yet.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
It has 100 of the most innovative companies, so it's not just the same raspberry and blueberry companies. You're getting a variety of innovation across sectors.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
200. You know, that makes for a really good podcast and just hear me list out digits. Well, we're doing it.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
I want you to share today's episode with someone who's not afraid of a little inefficiency in sports, a connoisseur of the mid-range jumper, a fan of hard nose rushing. I think they may enjoy the rough edges of MBD, too.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Yeah, you're seeing two forces here. One, there is that uncertainty over the U.S. 's economic state, but then you also are seeing what other countries are doing to inspire more dollars to fly their way. You mentioned Germany's plan to massively increase their spending. That's been lauded as this big moment of change in European policymaking.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
So now Europe's stocks, currency, government bonds, they're all ripping. Then you look over at someone like China. Deep Sea was raising questions about America's supremacy in the tech sector. You have BYD that is now a bigger EV automaker than Tesla. So you add it all up, and suddenly this aura that the U.S.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
had, the market exceptionalism that it had for more than a decade is looking a lot shakier than it ever has. If you even go back a month ago, though, the S&P 500 was at a record high. Go back to last week, though. It's logged one of its worst weeks of underperformance relative to the rest of the world in this century. So things have shifted quite quickly over just the past month. few months.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
And, of course, write the U.S. off at your own peril because we have seen in the past that sentiment can shift literally on a dime. It took three weeks for the S&P 500 to regain all-time highs after that deep-seek freakout that everyone had that hammered markets early in the year in January. So it's definitely one of those things where you can't just say, ah, the U.S. is on the decline line.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
invest in Europe, invest everywhere else except for the US. It's still the biggest game in town, but now it's clearly not the only game in town anymore. Picture this, you're running a research lab and you have two candidates for an open position. One is a PhD student, eager, smart, and maybe a little sleep deprived, but affordable at around $30,000 a year.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
The other, an AI agent with no student loans, no coffee addiction, and a $20,000 a month price tag. That is the choice that OpenAI is putting on the table. They're reportedly working on a PhD-level AI that can perform high-level research tasks, analyze massive datasets, and write your next academic paper if you are willing to pay the equivalent of a six-figure salary for it.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Then, can an AI agent that costs $20,000 a month ever be worth it? It's Monday, March 10th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
OpenAI isn't just saying its models can assist with research or automate basic tasks. These premium models will supposedly operate at the level of and maybe even replace highly trained experts. They're reportedly also working on tiers, a $2,000 per month Knowledge worker assistant, a $10,000 a month software developer agent, and at the top, that $20,000 PhD level researcher.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Neil, none of this pricing is confirmed yet, but it does shift the conversation around AI replacing classic white collar workers to a much different one. Because if these models can handle problems that typically require years of specialized academic training, that could be worth the eye-popping price tag.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
For context, actual PhD students earn about $20,000 to $30,000 per year. We're talking in the range of 8 to 12 times more expensive, which means they have to be 8 to 12 times more productive. What does PhD-level AI actually mean? It's not an official standard by any means. It's just more of a marketing term that's based on how these AIs do across a variety of benchmark tests.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
This new AI agent that OpenAI has released does very well across a lot of benchmark tests. So maybe it doesn't automatically translate to real world problem solving or original research capabilities, but it does do well in these test environments. But maybe you can push back and say, hey, they can't really do critical thinking. They can't do any physical work in a lab.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
They don't have an ability to interface with the real world. So maybe that is something. But on the other hand, you are saying that these things never turn off. They don't take coffee breaks. They don't fall asleep. They can just chug along on these really complex problems over time. So you can see the argument for both sides of it. Who knows if the price range will be justified, though?
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
In 2021, as the world reeled from the pandemic, supply chain snarls led to shortages of all sorts of goods, semiconductors, jewelry, clothing, and also vowels.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
The poster child was Aberdeen, pronounced Aberdeen, but written like a CAPTCHA code with no E's, who during that time debuted its new modern, agile, digitally-enabled brand, ditching its E's to try to show how hip and cool the global investment company was. The reaction? Universal mockery. The backlash was so strong that Aberdeen's chief investment officer
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
actually complained about, quote, corporate bullying. But at long last, the A-E-I-Os and U's are back. Last week, Aberdeen announced it is bringing back its vowels and rebranding as Aberdeen with all the E's in their rightful place again.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Neil, despite finally seeing the light when it comes to vowels, Aberdeen is still hopping on another trend of keeping their name in all lowercase letters like a teenage texter. comes to rebrand.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
I do think that the issue was that they were just chasing a trend that had already passed them by at this point. I mean, all those companies you mentioned were founded in like the early 2000s. Aberdeen did it, you know, in 2021. So they were, you know, decades late, if you really want to consider that. It would be like, you know, wearing skinny jeans now.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Like, oh, it used to be a trend, you know, 10 years ago, the kids used to be wearing it. But now the
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
opposite is true so that it does show the perils of like being too late on a trend you just look way way worse it also kind of maybe joins the branding disaster hall of fame there's been a lot of those i mean i think back to 2009 tropicana tried to change this iconic orange juice logo two months later the orange juice logo is back because everyone hated it twitter actually was twttr but then
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
finally got the domain, which added its vowels back. And then just recently, I think of Jaguar, which has been getting skewered. It's been getting, you know, absolutely made fun of online because their rebrand people have not liked at all. So you run this risk of every time you try to change something, there is a risk that people really don't like it and you have to walk it back a few years later.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
My favorite is Dunkin' Donuts. Remember when Dunkin' Donuts dropped donuts and everyone again, you know, jumps on their backs and say, how could you do this? But now Dunkin', everyone calls it Dunkin' and it's done really well. Like the stock is up since they did that rebrand. So I do think you are right for every, you know, failure. There are just as many successes.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
Up next, it is time for our winners of the weekend. Have you taken our morning market trivia quiz yet?
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
If you want a sneak peek, here's one of the questions right from the quiz. Which of the following is not a major index? A. Nifty 50 B. S&P 500 C. DKXI 40 or D. Nikkei 225
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
I am so glad you asked, Neil. For Arizona, it's hot. Summers in particular are very hot. So when the clocks spring forward and sunset is an hour later, that would keep people out later during hot months, and no one wants that. State leaders also believe that springing ahead and falling back would increase efficiency. energy consumption because of all those extra AC costs.
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Focusing on your nutrition this year, allow us to introduce you to your new best food friend, Factor.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
That's a solid choice, but I've been on a little poultry kick. Mushroom chicken thighs with wild rice and garlic roasted green beans can't beat it. Factor makes it easy to feel your body and feel great. Their meals arrive fresh and fully prepared. All you have to do is select your weekly menu.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Eat smarter and get started at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50off. Use code morningbrew50off for 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code morningbrew50off at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50off for 50% off your first box plus free shipping. We have a special Winners of the Weekend segment coming your way today.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So you got to feed the ratings machine, even if it means giving 22 million Americans a case of a Super Bowl flu, which, by the way, Neil, should you be partying in Philadelphia right now or something? My heart is on Broad Street.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Obviously, the Super Bowl was yesterday, and while the game was about as lopsided as a shopping cart with one wheel, we're going to run through some of the other winners that weren't wearing Kelly Green. Up first, old celebrities. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal recreated their deli scene from When Harry Met Sally, except this time, Sally's enthusiasm was for Hellman's mayonnaise.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Harrison Ford narrated an ad for Jeep. Martha Stewart danced around for Skechers. Morgan Freeman's dulcet tones graced a homes.com ad. Everywhere you looked, there were celebrities pushing products, and most of those celebs were on the older side. Neil, it felt like this year's commercials were characterized by pretty safe, nostalgic choices.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Yeah, you know, that small sport, the NFL, never associates itself with beer. So I totally see where you're coming from there, Neil. I do think that most of these ads were also in development during the last presidential election. So no one really knew what was going to come later down the pipeline.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So they kind of chose safer, less controversial things, which is always what they do for the Super Bowl. But this year especially, I think they're like, Let's let's reference a time in the past. Let's reference nostalgia. Let's reference these older celebrities because that's about as safe and middle as the road as you can play it. One ad that didn't play it safe, though, was Doritos.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
It was this short ad featuring aliens trying to abduct a Doritos bag. And it was funny. We both chuckled at it when we saw it at our watch party. And it turns out that the part of the reason for its edgier vibe was that it was fan made Doritos.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Doritos ran a contest where normal people could create a spot for the big game after a round of fan voting abduction, which was the ad's name, won the prize, sending its two directors to the Super Bowl and $1 million richer. You know, it did feel like in a year where a lot of brands were playing it safe, Doritos ad stood out because of that.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
I like that. Married to the game. We will discuss the big game in more depth later in the show. So stick around for that. Now, a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, during the pandemic, I went through a baking phase. But one time, I accidentally substituted salt for sugar.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And it was smart, too, because they had three finalists, and they kind of put them all out on their social media. So they kind of got triple bang for their buck. They got three ads made. They only had to pay a million dollars to the eventual creator, and it was just – Trusting creators always leads to a better product, I think. By the way, these aren't just some no-name filmmakers.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
One of the creators, Nate Norell, he's got 6.2 million followers on TikTok. He is a filmmaker, so it's not like he just picked up a camera for the first time, you know, won a million bucks. Another ad that turned heads this year came from Nike. Nike's been... on a rough run recently. Its stock is down about 35% over the last year. It's losing ground to brands like Ahn and Hoka.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Desperate times call for desperate measures. So last night was the first time in 27 years that Nike ran a Super Bowl ad. It leaned on stars from women's sports to spark a brand revival. Its 60-second spot featured people like Kaitlyn Clark, Asia Wilson, Sha'Carri Richardson.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
In an earnings call back in December, Neil, Nike said it would be investing more in marketing to try to get some of its swag back, some of its aura back. That ad last night was a step in the right direction.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And I watched it this morning and I did get chills. It was Led Zeppelin music in the background too. It just did hit really well. It wasn't just women's sports too, specifically women's basketball. Four women's basketball players featured in it. They think that the meteoric rise of women's basketball, they just want to ride the coattails of it essentially by elevating these players and these women.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
The final ad trend that we have to mention, flying facial hair. Two different brands, Pringles and Little Caesars, came up with essentially the exact same concept. Facial hair of some famous people uproots itself from men's faces and flies around freaking people out.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And Little Caesars ad actor Eugene Levy bites into some pizza and he likes it so much, his famous eyebrows lift off from his face and fly around like a big hairy insect. Then Pringles followed that up by showing... The equally famous mustaches of Nick Offerman, James Harden, and Andy Reid lifting off to fly around as well. The similarities were uncanny.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
I think it speaks to my earlier point about ads playing it rather safe this year that two ad agencies came up with the same concept for two different brands. Do you think this was a coincidence? I think it is a coincidence because you can go back to Super Bowl's past and similar things have happened in 2021.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Two advertisers, Indeed and Guaranteed Rate, actually used the same exact clip of stock footage showing this man carrying a kid on his back. So it just happens like these ad agencies, you know, some of the similar people work at both. So I can see how it happens, which I think, again, just props to Doritos because Doritos Let the fans make an ad. Let's do something different.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
You will never end up doing the same ad as another ad agency if you let fans do it. So I thought it was very funny. People were scratching their heads saying, are they related? I think it truly was just a coincidence.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Hey, I never did it again, but it did show me how one wrong move can lead to disastrous results. Same goes for managing international payments for your business.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Yeah, things will definitely be what do we do with deep seek? What do we do about deep seek? Also, what's the most effective way to work with the current administration? He wants to, you know, strip some of those regulations away without, you know, sacrificing safety. And I do think that last point will be a big talking point.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
How do you deal with the risks associated with AI without stunting progress? Apparently, Sam Altman is going to give a speech related to that topic as well. So safety, deep seek, what to do with Trump.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
I know they should. I'm just curious to see if Uncle Ogrimacy has made a mark yet. He was just rolled out last week, so I don't think the Shamrock Shake is going to impact this quarter reports of earnings, but look forward to next quarter to see if Uncle Ogrimacy leaves his mark.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
And factor in exchange rates, hidden fees, delays. It's like trying to bake without a recipe.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
I love this tradition, but if you're an ex and you get a video of your ex... Feeding a super worm to a sloth bear, you're like, I think you feel pretty good. You're like, I still live so rent-free in your head that you're paying, you know, aquariums and zoos to feed me to their animals. I don't know. I think that makes you feel pretty good as the ex. I don't think the ex gets it. You get it.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Yeah, but you can get the – oh, yeah, I guess you wouldn't send it to your ex.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Neil, you actually read my mind. I want you to share today's pod with someone you want to be your Valentine. Yeah, you're a little late. Yes, the podcast isn't the most romantic thing to ever share, but still, shoot your shot.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
No hidden fees, no crazy markups, just fast, fair, and transparent transactions.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Yeah, it seems the Trump bump was short-lived. I mean, we have these tariff threats. We have these tariffs that are actually being carried out. These pretty crazy stock market swings as well as a ton of executive orders that get issued and then immediately rescinded. It's all caused Americans to feel a lot more pessimistic, a lot less...
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
more uncertain about the economy than before Trump took office. Remember, immediately after Trump's victory, consumer confidence went through the roof because he was going to be this very market first. Sentiment stayed elevated the entire run-up to the election in anticipation of Trump taking office because he won one, the Oval Office by pledging to improve the economy to bring down inflation.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Those two things, obviously, it's only been a month into his administration, but those two things haven't happened necessarily, which is causing consumer confidence to appear to be a little more shaky.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
This jobs report was also the one where you do some data adjustments that happens at the start of every year. And what we saw in 2024 was that there were just over 2 million jobs added over 2024. That's around 166,000 jobs per month, which is a pretty solid rate, actually. That is pretty much dead on with what we saw before the pandemic in 2019.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Then the Super Bowl was kind of a blowout, but the ads, they were also honestly kind of boring too. It's Monday, February 10th. Let's ride.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
As for January's jobs report, though, there has been a little bit of a concerning trend. It was solid overall, but you have started to see that some of the churn that the job market needs to operate in a healthy manner has been slowing down. We've talked about this on the show before. People are not quitting their jobs. The quit rate is down a lot.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So there isn't a lot of movement in the job market, even though you are seeing pretty solid growth still. And there were some external factors as well. A lot of sometimes weather and illness can affect January jobs report, as well as some of the natural disasters we saw, like the wildfires in California. So it has been a good start to the year. We're still seeing solid jobs numbers.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Rates are still elevated. The jobs market isn't, you know, popping off anymore. That two factors could also contribute to some of these feelings of uncertainty that we've mentioned so far in this story. Security officials from the UK are knocking at Apple's backdoor, asking the privacy-focused company to allow them to snoop around encrypted content that users upload to their iCloud.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
According to the Washington Post, the British government issued an order, which is called a technical capability notice, last month. It's a criminal offense to even reveal that the government has made a demand, which has put Apple in a rotten spot. Does it acquiesce and break its privacy promises to its users, or does it cease to offer the encryption technology so as not to run afoul of the order?
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
The UK justified serving the notice to Apple by saying that end-to-end encryption makes it easier for terrorists and child abusers to hide illegal activities from law enforcement. But tech companies have long resisted being used as tools for governments to spy on their users. It's also a slippery slope.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
If Apple is forced to give in to the UK's demands, then other nations like the US and China will likely make similar ass. So Neil, big prologue. privacy showdown brewing here with much larger implications for how tech companies and governments interact.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Right, and I said it puts Apple in a rotten spot. That's not just a pun. That is so true because Apple touts privacy as one of its core values. They literally describe it as a fundamental human right. They've made it such a big selling point for users.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
So if they have to give in to this technical notice, one, it will just shred their reputation because you can't be this privacy-focused company but then also let governments have a backdoor into their users' data. So they'll probably just cease to offer this protection. It's called advanced data protection. They've had it around since 2022 to encrypt user data.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
They'll probably just stop offering that in the UK rather than give in and shred their reputation when it comes to privacy.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
There are cascading effects to this. A lot of people will lose their jobs. Clinical trials will start to slow down as well. A lot of research goals will go unmet because researchers have pushed back and say, yes, of course you want to support direct science. Those are the direct costs. But you also need to fund the indirect costs.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
You subsidize the infrastructure necessary to carry out those research things. I mean, say you need a really expensive new electron microscope. You can't afford to buy it yourself, so you go to the NIH for a grant for that. But then it's also just really mundane stuff like heating the buildings, paying personnel. So it's not just the fancy stuff.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
It's just everything you need to support this infrastructure. Also, there was pushback, too, against this idea that these very rich institutions like Harvard, Yale, these research facilities can make up the difference with their endowments. School endowments are not just this slush fund that you can go in and out of and pull money from willy-nilly.
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They have pretty intense limitations that make it hard for schools to draw them down too quickly. So you can't just post a graphic saying, look at how big Harvard's endowment is. They can definitely afford this. There are limitations when it comes to how you can use an endowment.
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
Well, Neil, Roger Goodell, the commissioner of the NFL, has answered that very question. It comes down to ratings. According to Goodell, the reason we haven't done it in the past is just from an audience standpoint. The audiences on Sunday night are so much larger.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Now it's time for our winners of the weekend, the segment where Neil and I picked two stories that had a better weekend than Duke Haters. Neil, I won the pre-show game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, so I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is Minecraft. All those kids tugging on their parents' shirt sleeve combined to create some serious spending Mike this weekend.
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As a Minecraft movie shattered box office expectations and brought in $157 million domestically in the biggest opening weekend of the year. The movie, that is an adaptation of the ultra-popular video game title, was initially expected to only bring in $60 million, but that severely underestimated the fact that it had Jack Black going very hard in the paint.
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Part of the reason for the movie's overperformance is kids freaking love it. Reaction videos posted this weekend on social media saw theaters erupting to particular fan service moments. One person posted on social media that, quote, when Jack Black said chicken jockey, I bleep you not, the entire row in front of me gave a standing ovation.
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They're also down a 4%. So yeah, go ahead and put an extra shot in your espresso. Now a word from our sponsor, TaxAct. Neil, do you think Batman ever did his own taxes? Definitely not. That's what Alfred is for. Actually, maybe Robin was a CPA. The point is every hero needs a sidekick.
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Chicken jockey is of course referring to a rare instance in which a character rides a cuboid chicken in the game. You may roll your eyes or even ask for a translation from your 12-year-old nephew, but the movie industry is happy to be rolling in the dough again. After a brutal march absent of any big releases, industry earnings are down just 5% in 2025
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after previously staring down a 13% gap pre-release of a Minecraft movie. Neil, seeing the jokes that were getting thunderous applause in this movie, it was the first time I truly felt a little old.
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And Warner Bros, which was the main studio that financed this movie, they did 75% of the financing and they did really well. They arranged this marketing partnership with McDonald's that went viral on TikTok. But also a lot of people are crediting Legendary for adding this magic producing touch. And Legendary jumped in to finance the extra 25% of the movie.
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But if you go down Legendary Entertainment's kind of hit list over the last few years. They are kind of the king maker when it comes to resuscitating old IP. They brought back King Kong in 2017. Now that trilogy has gone on to gross $1.6 billion worldwide. They were also the force behind Dune part one and part two, which took in $1.1 billion.
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So if you want to adapt a beloved and sometimes complicated source material, hit up Legendary because they clearly have it figured out.
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Oh, man, I didn't play a lot of video games growing up. Maybe like an iPhone game, like Doodle Jump or something like that. Fruit Ninja. I could see us going back into those era of IP and getting into the mobile genre a little bit.
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And if you're a sole proprietor business owner, you definitely needed one because chances are things are a mess under the hood.
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So you're saying there's a chance despite this pretty hefty price increase. I mean, it's over 100% increase. The lottery spokesperson basically said that a lot of the customers were already spending more than $5 when buying a ticket. So hopefully with the added bang for your buck, you're supposedly getting here. it will not be too big of a shock to the system.
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They kind of compared it to a subway fare hike where you don't really get anything more. You're paying more money for the same ride. In this case, they're saying the price increase is leading to improved odds, a better chance of winning money, faster growing jackpots. So technically you're getting something in return for this rather sizable price hike.
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I mean, technically, this thing hasn't even really started yet because April 9th is the big day when these reciprocal tariffs kick in. It also is a big day where we start to see some inflation data that may be influenced by some of these tariffs as well, although likely we're going to have to wait for next month on that as well. So still in the first inning of this very long stretch to come here.
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It is a steal, although I was seeing some chatter this weekend that it tastes about as good as what you pay for it, which I would like to push back on as someone who's been in the Masters one single day. It's pretty good, I think. $1.50, you know what you're getting, so the $1.50 pimento cheese sandwich is good enough. Do you want my Masters picks now, or should we wait a little bit?
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Let's wait until Thursday. I'll sit on them.
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My only commentary on the White Lotus is I'm finally that we all finally got to use the Duke meme when Duke lost. Mike White conspired to make it happen. I am sure of it.
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That's the kind of sidekick I need. Less utility belts and spandex, more spreadsheets.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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File before April 15th at taxact.com.
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The word on the street is not great, Neil. Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager who is also a very vocal backer of Trump, has been on a posting spree on X over the last few hours saying, quote, that a massive and disproportionate tariffs risk destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner is
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He urged Trump to call a timeout on Monday today or else he wrote, we are heading for a self-induced economic nuclear winter and we should start hunkering down. He also posted last night that he strongly believes launching tariffs on April 9th against the entire world is a mistake.
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So you are seeing a lot of anxiety coming from even the people who are some of the more vocal backers of this administration. And suddenly Trump, A lot of the calculus has changed when it comes to what the Fed is doing as well.
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Even though Jerome Powell kind of said we are still in wait-and-see mode, even though that two-headed beast of stagflation is potentially creeping up on us, suddenly the market is now pricing in the Fed cutting rates five times by year-end now. Previously, it was only looking like three times. So you are seeing a lot of things changing very rapidly now.
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From the people, the billionaire class who was supporting Trump all the way down to Jerome Powell and the Fed saying suddenly the calculus is changing.
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Then a Minecraft movie put the industry on its back this weekend with a remarkable box office debut. It's Monday, April 7th. Let's ride.
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One fascinating thing to observe over the last two days of last week was the divergence between retail investors and hedge funds. Through the first three hours of trading on Thursday, retail investors were net buyers of almost $3 billion in stock. That is the second highest level on record since JP Morgan began tracking data 10 years ago. Meanwhile, global hedge funds and ETFs dumped
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more than $40 billion of stocks on Friday, which is the largest selling on a net basis in almost 15 years. So you are seeing retail investors, people like you and me, buying the dip, as you like to say, but then you have the professional side of things just dumping things left and right. So Jim Cramer was kind of on CNBC saying that there's a possible Black Monday level event coming today.
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So there's a lot of different factors where you're seeing professional investors behaving one way and then not professional investors behaving the other way. So that's going to be a fascinating event. tension to see play out over these next coming days as well.
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In the face of the uncertainty tariffs have injected into the global economy, companies around the globe are looking around like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, trying to figure out what to do. And it looks like the answer is press the pause button. Case in point, Nintendo.
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The tariffs landed at the worst possible time for the Japanese video game maker, ahead of its much-hyped release of the Switch 2 console. Just hours after announcing pre-order availability, the company Reverse Course announced it would be delaying the April 9th pre-launch date, though it's still planning to ship the console this summer.
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Nintendo had already shifted about half of its Switch 2 manufacturing to Cambodia and Vietnam in anticipation of a US-China trade war, but now those countries are also caught in in the tariff crossfire too, hence the pause. Another unwelcome casualty of tariffs is the US IPO market.
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Klarna and StubHub both put their public debuts on ice in a blow to what was supposed to be a promising period for companies going public. The buy-now-pay-later giant Klarna was scheduled to list today with a projected $15 billion valuation, while StubHub planned to launch its roadshow pitch to investors this week. Both of those timelines are now on hold due to market turmoil.
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Finally, Ford and Stellantis are trying to capitalize on the Buy America push, extending employee-level discounts to all customers for the rest of April in an attempt to stave off panic about rising vehicle prices. But across the pond, Jaguar Land Rover decided to temporarily halt shipments to the U.S.
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following Trump's 25% foreign auto tariffs to give themselves some time to figure out their longer-term plans. So, Neil, a lot of companies are entering wait and see mode.
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Yeah, and a lot of these companies are looking around saying, I thought we did what we were supposed to do here. We were supposed to diversify our supply chains outside of China. And Nintendo is just the perfect example of that. It's like we thought we laid the groundwork for. We knew the Switch 2 was coming. We wanted to get out of China specifically.
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But now their cost looks like they're going to go up. They still say they're going to release it. But they're just taking that little minute to figure out what to do. The IPO market is also just very frustrated, specifically venture capital firms who were kind of counting on the IPO market coming back to life under the Trump administration after a really bad couple of years for big exit.
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Well, Neil, have you ever heard of a circuit breaker? But seriously, circuit breakers have levels that end up getting triggered when markets go down by a certain amount. For the S&P 500, trading would be halted after a 7% drop or a 13% drop. And if the worldwide market performance while you're sleeping is any indication, a lot of those levels are going to be tested today.
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They just had CoreWeave, which was the big AI data center infrastructure company that debuted last week. It did all right, but nothing crazy. But now you are seeing these two shining hopes in StubHub and Klarna pressing pause as well. And then Land Rover, too, is also just saying we have to enter wait-and-see mode because the U.S. is the second largest expert market for the U.K. 's car industry.
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Those cars are getting a lot more expensive. Land Rover, Jaguar says... doesn't make any of their vehicles inside the United States. So they have to take a step back and recalibrate because of these increased costs that tariffs are introducing.
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These two events, back-to-back, Trump's tariff and then the boost in production, have totally shifted the global energy market. Crude is right around that $60 per barrel, and that has just basically completely cast a doubt on Trump's drill-baby-drill approach, saying that we want to achieve energy dominance, but it's very hard to even predict.
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create new drills profitably if oil is lingering around $60 a barrel. $65 is actually the threshold that many companies need to profitably drill new wells in places like Texas and surrounding states. So you are right that even though gas will likely end up being cheaper, it does lead to a lot of kick-on effects down the road that make energy investment much harder.
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Let's move on. When the biggest companies in the world are shedding trillions in market cap, it stands to reason that the billionaire class is also taking a beating too, and that was certainly the case.
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The world's 10 richest people lost a collective $74 billion after last week's market rout, the worst single-day loss in five years, while the world's 500 most affluent people lost $536 billion for the biggest two-day drop in the history of the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Elon Musk took the biggest hit, losing $31 billion. Mark Zuckerberg shaved off $27 billion. Jeff Bezos lost $23 billion.
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Even Warren Buffett wasn't immune, losing over $2.5 billion on paper. Still, the Oracle of Omaha is living up to his name, if you zoom out a little. Berkshire's stock price is up about 9% this year, far outperforming the S&P 500's nearly 14% decline.
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And a big reason for that is Wall Street is looking kindly on Buffett's gargantuan cash pile, which has swelled from $110 billion in September of 2022 to $321 billion at the end of last year, bigger than Coca-Cola's market cap. It's a lot easier to be greedy when others are fearful, when you have the dry powder to deploy when things go south.
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Hong Kong's Hang Seng market is down 13%. Japan's Nikkei index is down 8%. Singapore down 7%. China is down 7%. India is down 4%. And over in Europe, things are not much better. The pan-European stocks 600 index was down 5.2% in morning trading. And then a little sneak peek at the U.S. S&P 500 futures down 4%. NASDAQ 100 futures down 4.3%. Futures on the Dow are up. Just kidding.
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And as the most famous value investor, many expect Buffett might be on the hunt for deals soon now that the market has taken a haircut. Neil Buffett is actually the only billionaire in the top 10 richest people list to see his net worth expand this year as his patient approach and hefty cash pile look especially prescient in these uncertain times.
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I think a lot of people are looking to him and saying that if he starts buying relatively soon, that might mean that he believes that Trump's tariffs are more of an economic blip or an annoyance created, um, and actually create these big buying opportunities.
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Or if he holds off, it might suggest that he's looking at these tariffs more in line with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, where it's just a persistent economic force that ends up kind of breaking the market a little bit. Unfortunately, we have to wait to see because we'll probably see an answer become clear when Berkshire's next shareholder meeting.
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We won't know necessarily what his moves are until a few more months down the line. Up next, let's talk about some winners of the weekend.
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That's a fitting metaphor. What's also fitting is when you can tap into the right network to target the professionals you're looking for.
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Then Trump is establishing a U.S. strategic crypto reserve. Find out which tokens made the cut. It's Monday, March 3rd. Let's ride. Neil, back in the saddle. I've been spreading lots of salacious rumors explaining your absence over the past week. So if anyone asks how your time working as a backup dancer for Bruno Mars was, just roll with it.
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Though it may not have felt like it, other movies were honored last night. Adrian Brody won Best Actor for his role in The Brutalist. Kieran Culkin won Best Supporting Actor, meaning he is suddenly halfway to an EGOT. Zoe Saldana won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Amelia Perez, which had a muted night outside of winning Best Original Song as well.
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And box office hits Wicked and Dune II snuck in to win two awards each. Neil, Conan was pretty funny. The movies were good this year, and we'll have to see about the viewership numbers, but it seemed like overall a pretty solid night for the Oscars.
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I know. How about this stat, courtesy of the Big Picture Podcast? From 1997 to 2004, every Best Picture winner grossed at least $100 million at the domestic box office. In the 20 years since then, only five movies have made that much. So you are right. The Best Picture category has slowly shrunk over time. That being said, though, Onora was made on a $6 million budget.
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That is the third lowest number. ever adjusting for inflation. The only ones lower are Marty, which was this film back in 1955, and Moonlight in 2016. So it's not a financial failure. It just was a small budget movie that had a small domestic footprint. Being said, though, I do think there was some excitement around this. I mean, Wicked and Dune II were two large films there.
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They didn't win as many awards as I wanted them to. I think Dune II should have been up for a lot more nominations. Timothee Chalamet was way better in that than A Complete Unknown. So that's just my own personal... Horster as well and Conclave, which is the movie you saw. We both agreed should have won a little bit more. But I think overall it was a pretty solid night. People liked Conan.
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He kept the show moving, was funny. So I think this will be seen as a relative success for the Oscars.
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Murder is a row right there. Well, it is great to have you back. Glad you got some R&R. And yes, I will take you up on that shaking beef offer. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Question for you, Neil. If you could time travel to the future, what's the first thing you'd do? Easy. Bet on the Eagles to win the Super Bowl again. Go birds.
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This is an incredible company. I mean, it's reviving hopes that Hong Kong can have a solid IPO market again. There was a ton of demand for this IPO. And I do think that it is just a company that a lot of people should begin to know about it. I haven't heard of Mishwe before this, but 45,000 shops across the world is massive. Generally, what they do is, one, they compete on price.
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They're about half as expensive as most of its peers for a similar product. But also, they're just a supply chain juggernaut. Since 2007, they've been establishing these raw material factories across China. They've built out these robust production factories. They also grow their own food.
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fruit, all of this in the hopes of just creating a supply chain that can get product to anywhere in China within 12 hours. When you have 45,000 stores, you do need that supply chain mastery. That is essentially its business model. They sell straws to their own franchisees. They send equipment to their own franchisees. That is where they're getting most of their money from.
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Expansion is the name of the game for them. Expand, they have.
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Yeah, Scott Bassett also said the Treasury Department is looking into potentially appointing an affordability SAR to address some of these inflationary pressures. So there is always the fear that these tariffs will jack up prices for consumers.
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So they're trying to, the Trump administration is trying to say, hey, we are looking into creating an affordability council to make sure that these tariffs don't hit everyday Americans that hard. But again, there's always the asterisk here. Let's see if these tariffs happen. actually go into effect or if they're just another device to gain concessions from trade partners like Canada and Mexico.
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We had this all you can eat buffet of economic data last week, existing home sales, jobless claims, GDP data, consumer confidence. It all painted a rather uncertain picture. Now let's throw in a jobs report and some bellwethers of consumer spending like Target and Costco. It should be a fun week tomorrow.
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But thanks to Invesco, you don't actually need a time machine to get a glimpse of the future.
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Yeah, there will be some pageantry. There will be some made-for-TV moments. If you recall last State of the Union, like you mentioned, in 2018, there was Trump kind of avoiding Nancy Pelosi's handshake and then Pelosi theatrically ripping up Trump's remarks behind them. So you are right. There will be some drama if there's any indication based off of his previous State of the Union.
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Who is the person who is going to both? I want to be that person, actually.
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I want you to share the podcast with a friend you haven't seen in a while, maybe a week when they are in Vietnam, or if they're just someone you haven't seen in general. Send the pod as a chance to reconnect.
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And it's not just tech. Invesco QQQ gives you access to innovators across healthcare, communication services, industrials, you name it. It's like a time machine for your portfolio.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Rethink possibility with Invesco QQQ. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for perspectives. With this information, read it carefully before investing. Full disclosures in the description of this podcast.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
While the traditional finance world was sleeping over the weekend, Trump announced a move that set the crypto world on fire, the establishment of a U.S. strategic crypto reserve. The announcement follows through on a campaign promise from Trump and furthers his pledge to position the U.S. as the crypto capital of the world.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
It also provides a shot of adrenaline for the crypto market that had been in a post-election funk. Bitcoin had dipped below $80,000 to a three-month low, but jumped 10% on the back of the announcement. Ethereum, XRP, Solana, and Cardano also jumped double digits on the news that they were to be included in the reserve, with Cardano soaring more than 60% alone.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
If those names sound familiar, they're all part of the eight biggest cryptocurrencies by market cap, whose post-announcement rallies helped push the total market cap of the industry back over $3 trillion.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Neil, after Trump took office, there was all this enthusiasm around crypto, but outside of the SEC dropping some investigations and the launch of some meme coins, there wasn't a whole lot of action. But now here is some action along with some controversy.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
It is more probably the fact that it was a campaign promise. This was floated over the campaign trail by Trump saying that maybe a strategic Bitcoin reserve would be something that he would establish once in office, which is why I said there's some controversy around this because it's not just Bitcoin in this strategic reserve. There are coins like XRP. There are coins like Cardano. Solana in it.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
And so that is leading to questions because those are not decentralized currencies at all. There's founding teams there. And there's a lot of crypto donors from those neck of the woods, essentially, that gave money to Trump's campaign.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
And now here he is turning around and essentially pumping those bags of those crypto holders, which led to a lot of pushback saying like, hey, these are the wealthy donors that helped propel you to a victory in the election. And now here you are, including some of the tokens that will increase their wealth here. There is a conflict of interest there. There's a conflict of ethics there as well.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
But in reality, glad you took a much-deserved break that you spent on a week-long trip to Vietnam. Give us a quick rose and thorn from your time away.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
It does feel like Trump's pro-crypto agenda has pretty much come into focus now. We have deregulation. We have the SEC dropping lawsuits. I mean, XRP, which is associated with Ripple, went from an SEC lawsuit to now part of a strategic crypto reserve in the span of a few months. So that's been a big 180. And then also you have just this establishment of a national reserve.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
So it seems like the boxes that he wanted to check when it comes to crypto have now been checked.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Not that many companies seem too eager to reenter the market for a variety of reasons. One, Russia's government obviously still has incredible influence over the economic outcomes that happen in the country. Two, inflation is still rearing pretty unchecked there in this war environment, wartime environment. Interest rates are also uncomfortably high.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
They're pushing 21% right now to try to cool off and not send the country into hyperinflation. And third, There is some issues with just the rule of law. It only exists kind of in theory in Russia. So all of those are not that welcoming to a multinational corporation to set up shop and do business there.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Really, outside of the energy sector, there's not a ton of companies that are saying, yippee-ki-yay, I want to get back into Russia here. So even though that we're hearing this dialogue floated, I don't know if we're going to see a flood of those thousands of multinational corporations reentering this market.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
But I think even energy companies are pretty scarred. I mean, go back to 2022. ExxonMobil took a $4.6 billion charge against earnings in that year for discontinuing the work that it was doing in Russia. So even big oil companies are going, ah, there's just a lot of scar tissue there as well.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
And then even if we go back to before this war broke out, Russia was not that big of a trade partner for the United States in general. They have about the same amount of trade with the U.S. that we do with Belgium. So it's not this massive, massive market, even though it is a large market area. In the global scheme of things, with the U.S., there wasn't that much deal being done.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
In 2021, there was $36 billion of trade, which, again, resembles the trade that we do with Belgium. So who knows, even if there is this rhetoric coming from this administration that we do want to open up business in Russia again, I don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze when it comes to Russia.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Just before the weekend, Microsoft announced that it is planning to sunset its video conferencing app Skype by May, telling its users to switch to Teams instead. And I tell you what, Neil, I haven't seen someone blow a head start this badly since the Warriors choked a 3-1 lead.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Founded all the way back in 2003, Skype was Zoom before there was Zoom, offering high-quality, long-distance voice and video calls. It made its way onto Oprah as her app of choice for video interviews and racked up millions of users before finding its way into Microsoft's loving corporate base for $8.5 billion, the biggest acquisition ever at the time.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Unfortunately, it turned out to be more Internet Explorer than YouTube in terms of success. Its overall glitchiness left it vulnerable to challengers like FaceTime and WhatsApp, and eventually Microsoft began phasing it out. Neil, in a world now dominated by Teams, Google Meet, Zoom, FaceTime, WhatsApp, Skype was the OG, but one that never quite hit its stride like many thought it would.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
I do just want to give Skype its props though, because in our current world, we don't even realize the fact that it is pretty magical that you can talk to someone across the world with really high quality voice and video calls.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
But at the time, it was this huge unlock for startups because it was usually only Fortune 500 companies that could afford the setups that could have good quality video with someone across the world. But now here was this very cheap option and it was supposed to supercharged productivity, which it did to an extent. eBay actually originally bought it.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
It wanted to use it to help buyers and sellers connect. They thought it would lubricate this online economy, and it didn't quite work. That was also considered a pretty big write-down for the business, and then Microsoft swept in because they saw a similar vision for it. And it just didn't quite hit its stride. So even though, I will say, even as recently as 2017, it was still being used.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Trump used it to field questions from journalists at the White House. So as recently as 2017, it was still being used in high-profile scenarios. But now you're right. It's just been eaten alive by Microsoft Teams. It's been eaten alive by WhatsApp, eaten alive by Facebook or FaceTime. So it had a big peak, but, you know, poor one out for Skype. Up next... It is time for our winners of the weekend.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
We know our listeners are above average. And that means you deserve above average everything, including your savings account interest rate.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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Start growing your money in the award-winning Cornerstone Money Market Savings Account by going to viobank.com slash morningbrew. That's viobank.com slash morningbrew. Rate subject to change. Visit viobank.com for details. Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of leaders in your career. What traits do you think are most important?
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement and visceral power.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Welcome to our Winners of the Weekend segment, where Neil and I pick two stories that had a better weekend than Neil drinking in the sights and sounds of Ho Chi Minh City. Neil, I won the pre-show contest of who did the most shows last week, so I am up first. My winner of the weekend is Onora, because the Academy Awards were last night, but they may as well have been renamed the Onora Awards.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
The movie took home the night's top prize for Best Picture. while also snagging Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, and Directing, making director Sean Baker the first to win four Oscars in one night for the same film, including Best Picture. And on top of all that, 25-year-old Mikey Madison also won Best Actress for her role in the film.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's W-I-S-E dot com slash business. My dog of the week is pretty much every auto company not named Tesla. All big three Detroit car makers, GM, Ford, and Stellantis, finished in the red yesterday, especially GM, who has the highest exposure to these foreign tariffs.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Roughly 30% of GM vehicles sold in the U.S. during the first three quarters of 2024 were were assembled in Canada and Mexico. And it's not just domestic car makers that are feeling the pinch. Foreign car companies are also sweating. For many foreign automakers, the U.S. isn't just a market, it's the market. Nearly one in three Porsches and one in six BMWs
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
I've learned that graduations are as much, if not more so, for the parents than they are for the students, and once his croaky voice kind of rings out talking about the challenges he had to overcome to get to the top of the frog heap, as he calls it, it would push me over the edge.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
and up stateside, along with $8 billion worth of German car parts each year. For instance, the BMW 3 Series was once the world's best-selling premium cars, but under the new rules, it's the subject of a 27.5% tariff, potentially adding more than $10,000 to its sticker price. Even a Ferrari isn't speedy enough to outrun these levies.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
The super luxury car maker warned consumers that it plans to hike prices by 10% on select models to cushion the blow from tariffs. Neil, let's just say that it was really easy to find dogs of the week by sniffing around the auto industry.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
if you enjoy those cars you might have to pay up for them and if you have you know finer taste in life i want to talk about ferrari a little bit because ferrari price hikes are always kind of wild to think about because on the one hand the dollar amounts themselves are huge for one suv that starts at four hundred thirty thousand dollars that ten percent hike amounts to forty three thousand dollars but
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
For a limited edition F80, that sticker price starts at $3.5 million, so that increase adds $350,000 to it. On the other hand, though, Ferrari customers are obviously a little bit more price-resistant than normal folks, so Ferrari stock actually ended the day up because they can weather that 10% price hike more than a normal person, everyday person buying a car. But it is crazy.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It might be us one day, Neil, one day when our ship comes in. Think of a number in your head between 1 and 10, then do that about a trillion billion more times and you too can match the output of a new quantum breakthrough courtesy of JP Morgan. In a first of its kind discovery, the bank announced it had produced truly random numbers using quantum computing.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
But wait, can't you just roll a dice, or heck, use a random number generator online to achieve such a thing? Well, don't tell your buddies when picking your fantasy football draft order, but those programs are not really random, and if you run them enough times, eventually they follow predetermined sequences. So, JP Morgan is saying its breakthrough means it's the first institution to generate
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
and mathematically certify truly random numbers using a quantum computer. Partnering with Honeywell and a squad of government labs, JPMorgan's discovery paves the way for near bulletproof encryption, smarter trading algorithms, and more simple things like fairer online poker.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It's also a major flex for the bank to be the one to make this step forward in quantum computing, which is a field that has long been heavy on hype and light on real-world use cases. Neil, look at the finance bros go making quantum breakthroughs in their little vests.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Yeah. Financial modeling and simulations are a big part that financial analysts use. They use these random numbers to simulate thousands of possible future outcomes for everything from risk exposure to stock prices. So the more randomness, the better insight you get. But you're right. With cryptography and cybersecurity, random numbers are the backbone of encryption.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Everything from securing your WhatsApp messages to financial transactions, if the numbers aren't truly random, a hacker with a powerful enough computer can start predicting patterns, and that's game over for data privacy. The third reason that I mentioned, too, is online gambling and gaming, because slots are
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Poker random number generators are deciding the outcome so you do want confidence that the things you're wagering on are truly random and not you know the result of some of these repeating algorithms now if you are you know if your ears are perking up and you're this is interesting to you I recommend going
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Can I tell you my favorite way to generate randomness? It comes from CloudFair, which is an internet security company. They have in their San Francisco office what they call the wall of entropy. What's the wall of entropy? It's a bunch of lava lamps lined up and they have a camera looking at it.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And wherever the blobs are going, that kind of translates to pixels, which translates to random numbers. So if you ever want to know why your web pages are secure, there's a wall happening in San Francisco, a very groovy wall, I might add, of lava lamps, you know, creating that entropy
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Yeah, they're definitely leaning into the exclusivity aspect. They also said that they would give access to private plane travel, personal chauffeurs, though they did not really elaborate on where these perks are actually coming from or how they would work for members. But they're also, you're seeing the evolution of Robinhood as a platform. It's growing up as a platform. as a banking platform.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
They're saying they're going to launch a wealth management aspect as well, where you can invest in this mix of ETFs in stocks. They would have a little bit of a management fee on top of that. Basically, you're seeing it just start to mirror some of the other features that you would expect of traditional banks with its own Robinhoodification flair.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
I had John Krasinski, so I think I win everything. And now a word from our sponsor, Sophos.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
The fact that it can deliver cash to your doorstep faster than these legacy banks is something that separates it, even as it is trying to compete and catch up to them as well. GameStop is getting into the Bitcoin game, but the way it's going about it has investors scratching their heads.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
The rollercoaster of a mean stop climbed higher earlier this week as investors cheered the board's unanimous approval of a plan to buy Bitcoin using corporate cash, copying a move made famous by MicroStrategy. However, the excitement quickly turned to trepidation when it was revealed that GameStop planned to fund its shopping spree by issuing $1.3 billion in debt
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
leading to a 22% plunge in its stock yesterday. Plus, GameStop's foray into Bitcoin might not be as successful since the stock is already valued at more than twice its cash balance, so analysts are skeptical it can boost that value using the same scheme that the more modestly valued MicroStrategy popularized. In other words, don't copy other people's homework if you are GameStop.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Finally, it turns out that The Hunger Games still has its fastball as a franchise. Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest Hunger Games novel from Suzanne Collins, is selling like hotcakes and moved more than 1.5 million copies worldwide during its first week, which is the biggest opening ever. for a book in the illustrious series. Its sales in the U.S.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
over that period have more than doubled that of its predecessor, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, and more than tripled the number for Mockingjay, which came out in 2010 and is the last book that I thought existed in the series. But clearly, the dystopian world of Panem still has a stranglehold on the literary community, Neil.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
I also, though, had to look at Onyx Storm, which is Rebecca Yarrow's book in the fourth-wing series. It sold 2.7 million copies in its first week. So it looks like the new age of romanticism is surpassing the old guard of Hunger Games, even though Hunger Games still has some juice left in it.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Secondly, you're right about the weak spots. Cyber attackers look for gaps in your business's defense under staffed teams, outdated tools, anything they can exploit. And most businesses don't have the time or people to cover everything. That's where SOFO steps in. It plugs the weak spots. It fills the gaps and offers complete connected protection.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
So even if you're short on staff or time, Sophos has your back. Every hour, every day, no excuses, no vulnerabilities. By the way, we are totally playing one-on-one after this.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Yeah, there's two ways to look at this. One, the optimistic take is that this is ushering in a new neocloud category to the stock market. A lot of people are calling it the pure play, that is a little bit of a tongue twister, AI IPO of the year. And so if you are wanting to, you know, buy into the AI hype, then CoreWeave is a great bull case for that.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
But then a lot of people also see it as maybe a highly levered, debt-ridden way for Microsoft, which is one of their biggest customers, to offload some of its less desirable workload to this company, or for Nvidia, who has an investment in CoreWeave, to turn that small investment into a very large customer. CoreWeave buys a lot of their GPUs.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
So this structure totally works, too, as long as AI demand continues to go up. But If cracks start to form, then CoreWeave starts to become a little bit of an ugly duckling.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Then, ChatGPT's new image generator is making everyone look like they're the main character in Totoro. It's Friday, March 28th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And then, also, another kind of crack forming is that, in a separate report this week, this analyst, T.D. Cowan, said that Microsoft is canceling new data center projects left and right due to an oversupply issue.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And so, if you are, again, a company like CoreEve that rents out AI compute and you see one of your biggest customers canceling data center contracts, that's not exactly a bullish signal either. This is going to be a polarizing debut. I mean, I'm just going to give every option.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It could swing either way here, but it looks like right now, you said the vibes are off, and it looks like the Bears are maybe the ones that are more prevalent right now ahead of its debut. If your timeline has reversed, recently looked like a cross between Spirit Away and every meme ever made, you're not hallucinating, you're just witnessing the magic of ChatGPT's latest upgrade.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Earlier this week, OpenAI dropped a major upgrade to its GPT-40 model. You can now natively create and edit images within the ChatGPT app and browser, meaning it added an image-crafting sous-chef next to the textual line cook you're used to interacting with. It's also a whole lot better than OpenAI's previous image gen software, DALL-E. GPT-40 doesn't spit out things that are clearly AI anymore.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It takes a beat longer to think then deliver images that are quite honestly scarily accurate. It can even manage hands now. Beyond just generation, it can also add, remove, and modify stuff in existing images. So if you wanted to cook up a mock-up image for your pickleball shoe brand in the style of a Don Draper ad, it can do that text and all.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
The internet quickly got fixated on one particular use case though, Studio Ghibli memes. Thousands of AI generated images started popping up in the style of My Neighbor Totoro in Spirited Away, but depicting popular internet moments like the hawk to a girl, Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined the party, changing his profile picture on X to a Ghibli-ified version of himself.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Meanwhile, back at OpenAI HQ, the Mac's gibblification effort was putting some serious strain on its tech. It's been fun seeing people love images in ChatGPT, Altman posted, but our GPUs are melting. Demand got so intense, they had to temporarily rate limit image generation. All in all, there's been this outburst of shock, awe,
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
and in some cases disgust, Neil, at the abilities of this new technology.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
It really is. I can't stress enough to how big of a step forward this was for the image generation capabilities because when this was rolling out, they did it kind of in stages and I still had the previous model. And when I was trying to recreate the images people were putting out there, it was just night and day how much worse DALI was than this. This is truly the first time where
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
you know, it is depicting things correctly. It's putting the correct number of fingers on the hands. Remember, AI has always struggled with that. It's, it's so easy to change people into different animation styles. I mean, you know, I was putting your face through it and I made you look like Wallace and Gromit, made you look like South Park.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And it is truly remarkable how good it is at capturing the essence. So there was definitely this shock and awe period where everyone's like, whoa, this is definitely a step forward. Um, But there was also soon after this big pushback because, you know, these are artistic styles that were developed by people over time.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And you don't necessarily want to see a program trained on that data spitting out what was the result of a lot of human hours of effort.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Yeah, I mean, Tesla has made a debut in this category a lot for us, usually in the doggy category because it's kind of been on a downward spiral since the election. This was a bout of positive news because of the fact that it is more insulated. Again, it's not completely protected from these tariffs because a lot of parts go into categories, the bat into cars, motors, batteries, raw materials.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
These still need to be imported from other countries. But compared to its competitors, it's going to fare a lot better. If you look at some of the North American competitors that have been maybe stealing some market share from Tesla over the last year, companies like GM, who makes the Chevy Equinox, Ford, who makes the Mach-E, a lot of those vehicles are far more exposed
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
than Tesla is, which is why you saw comparatively its stock do better than those legacy automakers this week.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And then one final, if Tesla is our 1A winner of the week, our 1B winner of the week is Rivian, too, which is another EV maker who does manufacture all of its vehicles in the U.S. as well. So you saw its stock jump about 7% yesterday as well for many of the same reasons that Tesla's did. Up next, we got our dog of the week. If you're trying to elevate your style, it's all about tailoring.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
I'm taking a very pessimistic view of this. Can you imagine being a parent? You likely contributed to your child's education, sacrificed a lot of time and money to see your kid graduate. and then a freaking Muppet gets up there.
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ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
And Theory's MotionWool takes tailoring to a new level with premium, expertly engineered Italian wool.
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Motion Wool's one-of-a-kind fabrication is where form meets function. It's breathable, wrinkle-resistant, and machine washable. So you can head from the office to happy hour to date night.
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Step up your wardrobe with Motion Wool. Head to theory.com slash morningbrew to get started. That's theory.com slash morningbrew. Taking your business international can feel like sailing through a sea of red tape, regulations, and unpredictability. Is attracting global business worth the global hassle?
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Wise offers 24-7 live support and transaction notifications so you can track your payments in real time. With full visibility of your finances, you can stay in control. And with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs, you'll be able to save as you scale your business globally.
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Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Right. I think part of the reason why this number is so big is that it is wide-ranging. He has a very successful CPG brand. Lunchly and Feasibles are these money-making CPG brands. But then his YouTube empire alone is worth a hefty chunk of change, especially as he's trying to wiggle his way deeper into traditional entertainment. We have to talk about the Beast Games game show.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
He actually just went on a podcast and started talking through – The economics of that and the economics were not good for Mr. Beast. He said, quote, I lost tens of millions of dollars on Beast Games, but it's about making season one as good as possible. The reason why part of or part of the reason why he lost money on it is that
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
He was giving out $5 million for this game show, which was the biggest prize in TV history. But then during the series, they did a coin flip, which if it landed on heads or tails, would determine if the prize would double or not. It did double, so then he gave out $10 million.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
And he's like, it was decisions like that that weren't the best financially, but he said hopefully it was the best entertainment-wise.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
I know. Yeah, that was the rumor for a while. Of course he would throw his hat into the ring there. That has cooled off a little bit, but it was interesting to see just how he could even throw his hat into the ring in the first place because, you know, TikTok is this multi-hundred billion dollar company.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So the fact that he was kind of marshalling enough resources to potentially make a bid does just go to show how big of a force he is in this creative landscape.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Poor Pluto, never getting to participate. But get out there tonight, everyone, and take it all in. This really is a once-in-a-generation event. Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. And LinkedIn is known for its precise B2B targeting, helping you reach decision makers based on industry, role, and company. It's like Apple's Find My Friends if you're friends or B2B customers.
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Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
I mean, I do think that it deserved a spot in our Dog of the Week column this week. Because of just the variety of pressures that it's facing right now, it's not just that its sales are declining, which they did slump 1.1% annually. It was its first drop in over 10 years. So that alone can land you in the dog of the week column.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
But there's also the sentiment shift against Elon Musk, a lot of those figures that you cited, because he obviously is spending a lot of time in Washington, D.C., not as much time remotely. running the company itself. So that has led to some polarization, some protests when it comes to his fan base.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
And then also the European market just turned hardcore on it, which is normally a very EV-friendly market. Just 9,945 Tesla cars were registered in January. That was a 45% drop registered in Europe a year prior. So it was just this confluence of a lot of factors that are sending Tesla down. Now, of course, Zoom out again. They're down beneath a trillion-dollar market cap.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So a lot of people are saying it's still almost a trillion-dollar company. So put it all in perspective. But you are right. There is a lot of pressure that this company is facing right now, especially as its CEO looks to be concerned with other things rather than turning this company in the right direction.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Finally, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines you may have missed. Blue Origin is set to launch a historic flight into orbit this spring. The crew will carry TV journalist Gail King, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, researcher Amanda Nguyen, film producer Carrie-Anne Flynn, Lauren Sanchez, the fiance of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, and the pop star Katy Perry.
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Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
The six women will take a 10-minute joyride aboard the New Shepard rocket, completing its 11th crewed mission come this spring, and will be the first all-female mission into space since a Soviet astronaut took a solo flight all the way back in 1963. And an eclectic group, but a historic one for sure.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
I can't wait. It is an all-star lineup. It's very funny. You know what is the most funny to me, though, is that Gayle King is not even going to be the first morning show host into space because, remember, Michael Strahan went back in 2021. He was on the third crude fight. Imagine you think you're going to be the first one up there, but no, Michael Strahan. Made it.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
And then I do, I will say a driving force behind this flight has been Lauren Sanchez, which is Jeff Bezos' fiance. She is a former journalist, author, and a pilot. And she has been, according to all reports, very instrumental in putting this flight together. So I think it's going to be very cool. I wonder what they're going to be chatting about because it is, I call it an eclectic group.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
And I mean, Katy Perry is just there. I don't even know how she made it in, but I'm excited to see, you know, their, this launch come together come this spring.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
I'm more of a blue light glasses because I still got that 2020. But this to me is definitely... Definitely a bid by Target to try to, you know, reverse the flagging store traffic that they've been seeing in recent years. Target has been kind of caught in the middle in recent times. They can't compete with Walmart or Costco on groceries.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So they've always relied on sort of these spontaneous drop-in visits where you buy stuff that you don't really need, mostly home goods and clothing, stuff like that. Walmart is more for essentials. Target is for some of the fun stuff. So is adding a trendy eyewear place like Warby Parker something going to bring and inspire those drop-in visits?
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Maybe, who knows, but you can see kind of why they're trying to, they're just throwing stuff at the wall right now to try to get people to keep coming back to their stores since they've lost some of that store traffic.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Yeah, not the first time a resetter has run this playbook and not the last time either. For our next headline, the number of babies born in South Korea last year went up for the first time in nearly a decade as the country fights to reverse one of the world's most serious demographic crises. 238,000 babies were born in the country last year, an increase of 8,300 from a year earlier.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
And meanwhile, some random guy named Todd who has nothing to do with you or your friend is hearing you yell. He's confused. You're confused. Everyone's confused.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Small, but it's the first time that yearly number of births has increased since 2015. The low birth rate has been a constant threat to South Korea's economy, which is the fourth largest in Asia. No kids means labor shortages and greater spending to support an aging population. Officials attribute the rise mostly to an increase in the number of marriages coming out of the pandemic.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So, Anne, we will have to see if after this marriage bump ends, if fertility rate starts to fall with it.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Yeah, it is one of those things that is happening across a lot of developed nations, especially with the U.S. We do have immigration that comes in and can you keep the population stable, but that is not the case for places like Japan and Korea with not as much of an immigrant influx. But yeah, a demographic crisis is a challenge for Korean policymakers. They
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
It leads to things like falling economic growth. It leads to increased costs of pensions. It leads to more health care costs for an aging population. And it's not for lack of trying either. Korea has been trying to turn this around for a long time now. Since 2006, they've committed $270 billion towards making child care more affordable, extending paid parental leave.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
encouraging reduced working hours. So this has been something that they have been focused on. So to see those numbers go up for the first time since 2015 is a good sign. But the question is, can they sustain it?
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
But with LinkedIn, your message actually reaches the right people. So you're not wasting budget on Todd.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
God, I never get tabbed to host. I keep putting my name up. I have picked all my winners, Anne, and I want everyone to record this so we can come back and know just how right I was. Best Picture, going to Conclave. Took top prize at the SAG Awards. It's also the only one that I saw, so I'm picking it here. Best Director, I'm giving Sean Baker for Enora because...
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
I haven't seen it, Nora, but I've seen a lot of good things about it. Best actor, I'm going Adrienne Brody with The Brutalist. I want to go Timothee Chalamet, but the Academy hates giving it to young people, so I'm going with Adrienne Brody. Best actress, Demi Moore, The Substance. I wish I could watch this movie, Anne, but I'm really bad with gore, and man, is it gory.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
The memes have been funny, so I'm rocking with Demi Moore. And then finally, best visual effects, I'm going with Dune. I handpicked this category specifically because it was the only way I could show love to Dune 2, which apparently the Academy forgot existed justice for Dune. If none of those are correct, and we delete this episode, we never air it.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
If all of those are correct, everyone Venmo me $1. I think that is only fair right there. Any storylines that you're looking out for?
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Fresh talent. I think Conan is going to crush it. That is all the time we have for today. Everyone, give Anne a round of applause in your homes or on your commute right now for filling in this week. You absolutely crushed it. Thank you for wrecking your sleep schedule.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
mvd audience neil is back next week where he will hopefully regale us with tales about all his travels let's roll these credits emily milliron is our executive producer raymond liu is our producer olivia graham is our associate producer lonnie fiscus is our technical director scoops dardaris is on audio hair and makeup is trying to sneak a spot onto that blue origin flight but i'm not sure if there's any seats left devin emery is our chief content officer and our show is production of morning brew
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Well, kind of like me at high school prom, it took a while, but we finally have a date for when Trump's tariffs against Canada and Mexico will take effect. Circle March 4th on your calendars, everyone. That is when the broad-based 25% duties will hit, with Trump citing drug trafficking into the U.S. as part of the motivation behind the import fee.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Trump also announced he was slapping another 10% tariff on goods coming from China, which will be in addition to the previous 10% one imposed on February 4th. Of course, these tariffs, especially those against some of the U.S. 's biggest trading partners, are expected to add to the economic strain that has emerged early in the Trump presidency.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
The market has been shaky over the last week, with three of the four past trading days ending in the red. And the Consumer Confidence Reading from Wednesday showed sentiment fell the most since summer 2021. The threat of tariffs are also rattling business execs.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
If a deal to prevent them isn't reached, which is still certainly a possibility, more than $1 trillion worth of imports would see higher tariffs. Nervy times for the economy, and especially under this looming threat of tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Let's hit some of those datas because you're right. We did get a flood of kind of economic data that paints a picture of where the economy is currently at. Pending home sales came in this week, and they were not good. Sales dropped 4.6% from December to the lowest level seen by the National Association of Association of Realtors who measures this.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Today, tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China, oh my, will start on March 4th.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Since they've been tracking the metric all the way back in 2001, it's the same story we've been hearing. High mortgage rates, elevated home prices are just kind of crushing home sales right now. So that was one piece of economic data we got. We also got jobless claims. First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose a lot more than expected in the last week.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
That is a potential hint that maybe there's some cracks forming in what has otherwise been a very solid labor market so far. There were 242,000 jobless claims filed last week. That was above economists' expectations of 220,000 claims by a fair amount there as well. We get PCE data today. That's the Fed's preferred inflation metric. We'll see how that comes into.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So whether you're looking at a carton of eggs or a housing price, you do start to see these cracks all under this umbrella of and tariffs are looming as well. March 4th, we actually have a date to what has been otherwise a pretty nebulous concept. We've heard a lot about tariffs, but now we actually have a date you can circle on your calendars for when those tariffs will go into effect.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
It's Friday, February 28th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Of course, the asterisk here, too, is that in the past, we've come to the brink of, you know, imposing tariffs on our neighbors in the north, as well as Mexico. But we have seen Trump back away as long as he got concessions from, you know, Claudia Scheinbaum in Mexico and in Canada as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So who knows if these will actually come into effect or they are another bargaining chip in the fight against fentanyl coming across the borders. That being said, though, there's been this weird side effect of Trump going after Canada that we've seen. recently a lot. It's basically resurrected kind of the Liberal Party in Canada. That had been left for dead with Trudeau stepping down.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
The Conservatives were going to kind of take over in Canada. But all of a sudden, due to this antagonization, if you look at polling, it's becoming a lot closer than you would expect. So there are all these kind of secondary effects that you haven't really considered with this brinksmanship tariff war that Trump is kind of doing it right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So it is fascinating to see how the trickle-down effects are affecting politics in Canada as well as just the economic state of America right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Now, just to zoom out one more time, I know we've zoomed out a lot in this segment so far. We did get GDP readings in yesterday, and the U.S. economy did grow at a 2.3% annualized pace in the fourth quarter. That matched estimates. Again, that is not encapsulating some of the policies that Trump has enacted so far or will enact, but still...
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
It is a snapshot that as a whole, broad-based, the economy is doing well, or at least is meeting expectations at this point. So that's just one final data point to put into this pie that we've just constructed of the entire state of the U.S. economy right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
First of all, do you watch these shows? Absolutely. And what was fascinating is I am not alone in that. In this war of traditional cable versus streaming, the crown jewel has been sports. Everyone's been fighting over sports because it's really the only thing people still watch live on TV. But that is not necessarily true. Jeopardy and Will & Fortune continue to bring in massive audiences.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
The two game shows... game shows draw about 7 million viewers a night each, which is a lot more than I expected. I mean, you look at some of these streaming stats from these pop-up golf leagues that are coming in. Those are well under a million. These are doing 7 million every single night with these very loyal audiences. They're also moneymakers.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune together generated $175 million in advertising revenue last year. So These are absolute forces of nature and one of the last real valuable properties, valuable IPs out there that streamers are fighting over because they've already come from sports. They've already come from wrestling.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Now they're coming from those late night or those evening TV shows that a lot of us have fond memories of watching.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Big numbers indeed. I do think that these are just enduring cultural institutions at this point, which is why Sony is being very careful in handling them with kid gloves because they don't want to. Yes, it is an aging audience. And by going to streaming, they're after a younger audience. But they do not want to alienate that older audience who is their bread and butter at this point.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So I think that's why. We've seen them be a little later to the streaming game than, you know, some other properties as well. You also mentioned, too, that initial winning bid for whoever will get them on their streaming platforms, they'll only be able to stream them the day after they air on, you know, live television. So to me, there's an arbitrage opportunity there to impress your friends.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Watch Jeopardy on traditional cable the night before and then just catch up. casually suggest, oh, let's toss it on streaming. Let's see what's on Jeopardy and then nail all the answers and press your friends right there. So that's a little bit of, you know, personal social arbitrage that you can do if these come to streaming, but are come to streaming a day after they actually air on cable.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
All right, here is the game plan, Skywatchers. Look for Mercury in Saturn soon after the sun goes down right near where the sun went down. Binoculars are encouraged. Then once night starts to fall, look to the western sky for a very bright dot. That is... Venus. High overhead is Jupiter, which will also look like a bright star.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
I mean, yeah, Ken Jennings has stepped in and people have liked him a lot. Same with, you know, Pat Sajak and Weryl Fortune. Now you have Ryan Seacrest who stepped in. So they have tried to... you know, bring in these modern faces. A lot of people know Ryan Seacrest to set them up for the next, you know, 40 year run, which is a good point to kind of end this segment on.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
There is a staggering amount of volume that comes with these shows as well. 425 episodes a year are produced. That is very appealing to streamers because it, It creates a sticky audience. Hopefully people are coming in night in, night out. Maybe it can help reduce with churn if Netflix becomes the platform that you watch Jeopardy on every day.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
So again, I expect there to be a fairly large bidding war. I mentioned Netflix there, but it's not guaranteed that they'll get it. There will be a bidding war over this very valuable franchises. Up next, it is time for Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week. This message, it's a paid partnership with Apple Card.
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Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Did you know you can earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase when you have an Apple Card? I said what I said, up to 3% on every purchase. You can even take that daily cash back and save it automatically when you open a high yield savings account through Apple Card.
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Whether you're embarking on an overseas trip or just grabbing a bite around the corner, Apple Card is built to be your smart spending sidekick wherever you are. It also helps that there are absolutely zero fees. To get started, head to the Wallet app on your iPhone where you can apply in minutes and start using your Apple Card right away to watch that daily cash roll in. Let's ride.
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Subject to credit approval, savings is available to Apple Card owners subject to eligibility. Apple Card and savings by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City branch. Variable APRs for Apple Card range from 18.24% to 28.49% based on credit worthiness. Rates as of January 1st, 2025. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of leaders in your career.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement, and visceral power.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
It's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where Anne and I pick one stock from the week's news that is having a better time than Neil sipping Mai Tais on a beach. And one stock that is facing the inevitable sunburn that will follow. I won the pre-show game of who can do the best British accent. Huge upset there. So I am up first. And my Stock of the Week is not a stock at all, but a man...
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
and a man by the name of Mr. Beast. Yes, Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, aka the YouTuber that your 13-year-old nephew idolizes, is raising money at a $5 billion valuation. He wants to use the cash to expand his burgeoning business empire, which includes the chocolate brand Feasibles and the snack company Lunchly, and of course, the largest individual YouTube channel in the world.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
Rotate back towards the east, but keep looking up and you'll get a view of the reddish Mars. Uranus and Neptune are up there as well, I promise, but will be so faint you do need a telescope. However, for those hoping to see a reunion with Pluto, don't get your hopes up. The dwarf planet that was demoted to that status all the way back in 2006 will be below the horizon during the parade.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
He says the business is profitable and brought in more than $400 million in sales last year. The upside of investing in MrBeast may lie in his ability to bring TV-level production to YouTube. His Squid Games in Real Life video has amassed over 750 million views on YouTube.
Morning Brew Daily
Is the World Ready for Trump Tariffs? & MrBeast Raises Funds After ‘Beast Games’
but he has also made the jump to actual TV, creating the Beast Games game show for Amazon Prime this year with the biggest prize in TV history. All of it adds up to create an empire that is apparently worth $5 billion to investors, Anne.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Yeah, hims and hers is riding high. It used to kind of be a one-trick pony. It had these hair loss treatments, these ED pills, but now it's very much a multi-trick pony. Less than a year ago, it started offering those compounded GLP-1 weight loss drugs. That was a big boon for the company. Now it has blood testing as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
At-home blood testing does seem to be kind of the next evolution or the next popular thing in at-home health right now because it does give you a good insight into a wide variety of health indicators that could help you with preventative measures or just get a snapshot of your health.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So I do think that we have seen hims and hers just evolve as a company, and Wall Street is clearly loving it right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
You go on with your day. Now let's go on with our show. A word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Kyle, thank you again for filling in today.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I do think the other bet that hims and hers is making right now is, one, it's setting it up itself as against the traditional pharma industry. We saw that in the Super Bowl ad. It literally was saying it took shots at the traditional pharma industry, saying the industry is priced for profits, not for patients.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So it is trying to set itself up as this new age alternative to that traditional monolithic industry. health insurance, health establishment that a lot of people have negative feeling towards. And then the other thing I think that this blood work acquisition does for them is it gives them a lot of data.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So they obviously want to accelerate their development of artificial intelligence, just like every single other company in the world out there. So they're saying that they're going to use part of the data they gleaned from this blood work. Patient identities will be removed. to build this database of if I get a result where it shows my LDL cholesterol is this level, what does it actually mean?
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
What does it mean across a broad swath of other patient data? So I do think that the end goal here is to get some more fodder to feed an AI algorithm that could help you manage your health, which is another reason why I think we saw that 20% bump yesterday. There's a little bit of AI story mixed in. You've got to have a little bit of AI in the mix. Exactly.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
No, I think that is what his and hers is thinking. He's like, what is our AI in the mix? And I think this is, you know, continuing their journey towards, you know, building an actual AI that can help manage your health. Palantir is making its dog of the week debut today after weeks of being a candidate for the opposite side of this segment.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
The AI company best known for its work with defense agencies had a no good lousy week, dropping at least 10% both Wednesday and Thursday before paring back some of those losses. The major drops came after the Pentagon announced it's prepared to cut the US defense budget by 8% each year for the next five years.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
That is not music to the ears of a company that relies on government contracts for over half of its revenue. If that wasn't enough, Investors also got a little antsy over a new stock compensation plan that CEO Alex Karp was granted.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
His new plan allows him to sell nearly 10 million shares of company stock in the next six months if he wanted to, which, with the stock trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 600 to 1, might be an attractive proposition. Kyle, not a name you'd typically expect to see in the dog-of-the-week column.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Preparation is a huge part of what makes MBD tick. But now imagine that you are in that chair in front of the bright lights with no idea with what we were talking about today, just fully in the dark.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I was going to make the same point. It shows the danger of having retail traders as your main investor base. Obviously, they can boost you to these insane highs that we've seen. Palantir, it was the best performing stock in 2024. Until this week, it was the best performing stock in 2025 as well in the S&P 500. If the narrative starts to swift, those same traders can start to abandon you as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Let's talk about the Pentagon side of things too. Pentagon's 2025 budget is $850 billion. There are plans to make cuts to that budget. The dogenification of the federal government isn't –
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
isn't ignoring it the pentagon and its gigantic budget that being said though palantir does still have great connections in the defense industry it could be you know one of those line items where when you're looking at that entire budget you go maybe do we need to be paying palantir x amount of money for you know this service so who knows if the fears are overblown who knows if it will actually be affected by those cuts but just looking broadly it's not good to see cuts to the defense industry's budget if you are a palantir shareholder
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Now let's sprint to the finish with some headlines you may have missed. Up first, the IRS is getting slimmer today. The agency began laying off roughly 6,700 employees, over 6% of the agency's workforce as of yesterday. If you still don't know where the good bathrooms are in the IRS office, you are probably amongst the layoffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I agree, but so many people run their B2B ad campaigns that way, no prep, firing willy-nilly, hoping they reach the right people.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
The cuts primarily affected those who have worked for less than one or two years. Cal, these layoffs come right as tax filing season is picking up in earnest, and the IRS is getting inundated with paperwork and questions from taxpayers. But cuts aren't expected to include workers essential to the filing season.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I know. So as of February 7th, the IRS had received and processed about 23.5 million individual returns. That was down about 8% from the same time last tax season, which might show that there is some buildup happening over at the IRS with some of these cuts, some of these uncertainty. It might be a headache season that is brewing upon us right now, especially with these cuts coming down the line.
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Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
No more sinking feeling knowing you are wasting time and resources. No more pit in your stomach knowing you're not prepared. Just precise targeting and great results.
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Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I mean, these games are important to talk about, not just because they'll pull in those gaudy viewership numbers, these gaudy ticket sales numbers. What it's also important to talk about is the geopolitical undertones to all this.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Trump said on Truth Social before the game that he called Team USA, and he repeated that phrase that he loves to say about making Canada our cherished and very important 51st state. But then after the game, once Canada won, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fired back on X saying, you can't take our country and you can't take our game.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So there is clearly, I mean, I'll call it chippiness because it still is sports at the end of the day. But just with the tariffs, with these conversations, with the way Trump talks about Canada, there's clearly some undertones of bigger unrest and unease between these two countries. It just stinks that we lost it.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Finally, just when you thought it was so over for discovering tombs of ancient pharaohs, suddenly we are so back. Egyptologists announced the discovery of the first tomb of a pharaoh since King Tut was uncovered over 100 years ago. The tomb belongs to King Thutmose II and was the last undiscovered royal tomb of the 18th Egyptian dynasty, according to the BBC.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
An archaeological team actually discovered the entrance to the tomb back in 2022, but thought it belonged to the wife of a king. But when they finally got inside, the tomb was decorated to the nines, which is a sign of a Pharaoh. The fact that we're still discovering tombs a century later, Kyle, pretty cool.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I just think it's cool that we still are finding these things. I mean, you saw that it was like a mistaken identity. They thought it was just, one of the reasons they thought it belonged to the wife of a king was the location. They were saying, I don't know, this location was not very good. It was situated beneath two waterfalls. It was down at the bottom of a slope.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So they're like, all this water was flowing through this tomb. Over the years, especially, it was a little wetter back during the time of the 18th Dynasty. So when they got to the tomb, it was not in good shape. There was a ton of water damage, but they did find some fragments of alabaster jars that had inscriptions that showed the name. It talked about the deceased king.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
And yeah, I guess your team don't go mucking around because of evil spirits. I'm team, it's pretty cool that we found a new tomb.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
All right, that is all the time we have for today. Kyle, thank you so much for stepping in and being Neil. You crushed it as always. Let's roll these credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenna Naogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup is on vacation with Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Hope it's not a white lotus situation where tragedy strikes. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is production of Morning Crew. Have a great weekend, everyone, and we'll run it back next week.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Walmart released its fourth quarter earnings yesterday. spooked the markets a little bit after it warned inflation fatigue and general uneasiness among shoppers could slow its roll over the next year. And since it's Walmart and it's huge, its tepid outlook stoked fears of a broader slump in consumer spending that affected the entire market. Q4 earnings actually weren't the issue.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Sales were up 4.6% year over year, topping expectations. E-commerce sales especially were a bright spot, jumping 20%. And higher income shoppers kept piling items into its shopping carts. So why was the stock down 6% yesterday? A cleanup on aisle 2025. It projects 3% to 4% full-year sales growth below Wall Street's expectations and well under the 5.1% growth it logged last year.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
It called out tariffs, which could weigh on the low prices, as well as lingering inflation as two reasons why sales and profit growth could slow. Kyle, combine Walmart's tepid outlook with the fact that U.S. retail sales fell more than expected in January, and you have a rocky start to the year for consumer spending.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell. And I'm Kyle Heggie. Today, Walmart, the bellwether of retail, warns there could be tough times ahead.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Right, and Walmart is –
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
typically pretty insulated from tariffs not only because a lot of what they you know source is from the united states but also they are so big that they have really great leverage when negotiating with partners and so usually they can skate by without having to raise prices too much but you're right there is just this cloud of uncertainty hanging over it right now that being said to walmart did have a pretty dang good quarter outside of you know kind of this uh
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
uncertainty that they're seeing ahead. Like they have diversified their business a little bit. Their ad business brought in over $4 billion last year. You don't think of Walmart even having an ad business, but e-commerce is growing as well. So Q4 was great, but looking ahead is where it gets a little murky.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Right, which actually we should talk about Amazon a little bit. Amazon did officially leapfrog Walmart in quarterly sales for the first time. Neil and I spoke about this on the show. It wasn't official back then because Walmart hadn't reported, but Walmart reported $180.5. billion in sales during the most recent quarter. Amazon came in at 187 billion.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So Walmart still technically leads the way in annual sales, but obviously Amazon is gaining ground there. But I do just want to zoom out a little bit because I've... Walmart is an $800 billion business. It's a microcosm of the entire economy. So you saw that filter through the market yesterday. The Dow was down 1% yesterday. S&P 500 dipped as well. The NASDAQ dipped as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So even though Walmart is just one company in the retail sector, it does give you a kind of a lens into what they think consumers will be feeling like over the next year. And they think consumers will be feeling a little bit apprehensive.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I assume it's some oil company.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
So as you can hear, Neil is out for the day and actually will be out for the entire next week as well as he is finally taking a long-deserved break, which means we have Kyle here today. Yes, thank God. Neil deserves a break. He absolutely does. So Kyle, you are from Minnesota, which along with the whole Midwest, has been in the midst of a little bit of a cold snap.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Listen, I am wearing a hat. I will take it off right now and put it in the ring. You are right. This was the vision for Amazon when they bought MGM Studios. They shelled out a big chunk of change to bring that under their content umbrella. And the crown jewel of that is obviously James Bond. But they've been at this impasse with the
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
ironclad control they decided when they got to make a new Bond film who would play James Bond whether you get remakes whether you get television spin-offs but it goes beyond that they also had final say over every single line of dialogue that came in the film every casting decision every stunt sequence you mentioned him skydiving into a plane that has to go through broccoli every marketing uh
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
tie in every TV ad, every poster, every billboard, that all filtered through the Broccoli family, which is why Amazon was like, all right, we bought James Bond, but we don't have any control over what he does or how we use him. Now, through this joint venture, they do, which...
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Could be a good thing because we'll probably get a new James Bond movie on the horizon, but also could be a bad thing because who knows if Amazon will treat this IP properly.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Yeah, I think one of the big sticking points was the Broccoli family never wanted to spin it off as a TV series. Remember, Amazon clearly wants to. They have the Prime TV service. They want to make a James Bond TV series to just squeeze more juice out of it. But the Broccoli family is like, no, this should be a cinematic franchise. This should only live in theaters. So you are right.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
I don't know exactly what agreement they came to. Maybe it was just a lot of pinky promises that we won't – overuse the IP, but here we are. I also, so Jeff Bezos wasted no time in like posting the article saying like, woohoo, it's under our control now. And he actually asked his Instagram following to say like, who should be the next James Bond?
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
It's, you know, it's the most popular question in media to ask. And I was just scrolling through the comments and the number one name that popped up was Henry Cavill, who, you know, has played Superman, played Witcher, which would be great, but any James Bond ideas come to your mind? Who do you think should play it? I mean, Timmy Chelle. Put him in. I don't know if he's got the muscles for that.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
In fact, it was so cold this week that cloud-detecting satellites pointed at the region saying, thought that all of Minnesota, the Dakotas, and part of Wisconsin were a cloud. The National Weather Service shared this gif of satellite imagery showing dark and light blue covering the upper Midwest, the hallmarks of clouds as seen by satellites, while actual clouds floated by over Illinois and Iowa.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Let's move on. You know that awkward moment where you call an Uber, but there's four of you, so that means one has to sit shotgun. Well, thanks to a new app that debuted this week called Protector, the person sitting shotgun might actually be holding a gun. Protector lets you hire on-demand personal armed security guards to give you both a lift and watch your six.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
According to the app, which is only available in New York and LA right now, your personal security force will include active duty or retired law enforcement officers, while your ride will be up to three Escalades or similarly sized vehicles. You can even customize your posse's outfit sim style on the app with business formal and technical Tactical Casual listed as options.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
The app charges at least $200 an hour for one driver and one guard, and you have to book for at least five hours. That's in addition to an annual $129 membership fee. What do we think of Protector, though, Kyle, the company that many are calling Uber with guns?
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
One of the reasons that the app's founder said that they brought this service to market, they actually said they rushed it to market after they saw the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. So they were clearly trying to play on some of those safety fears or safety anxieties that people might have when traveling. But if you do look at a lot of their marketing, it does...
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
It feels like cosplaying a little bit because usually personal security is only afforded to the ultra-rich, the billionaires who actually do probably need it. Now you can get it enhanced safety, as you might want to call it, at a decently affordable price. So, yeah, you can take a cynical look at it or you can say maybe this is providing a service to people who want it.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Whatever the case is, they have clearly struck a chord. We're talking about it. A lot of people are talking about it. They've done their job on the marketing front.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Yeah, hey, I mean, if it makes you feel important to have more security or if it makes you feel more secure to have people around you, you know, armed, then all the power to you, I guess. Up next, we got Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week.
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Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Whatever your answer is, Brooklinen is a great place to go for a bedding upgrade. All their stuff is soft and cozy and actually makes me excited to go to sleep every night.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
Kyle, there is cold, and then there is satellites mistaking your state for a cloud cold. What is going on?
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Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
And their customizable bundles make it even simpler to make your bedroom the oasis you need after a long day.
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Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
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Walmart Warns of Slow Sales in 2025 & Amazon Takes Over James Bond
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
I will spare you all from hearing that though, because that's not good podcasting. Just hear you hear me rattle off some digits here and there, but yeah, try the memory palace technique out. You might not get to a hundred thousand digits, but it's a good kicking off point. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil, how are you feeling about your sleep schedule these days?
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Right. You mentioned the higher end of the market. American consumers in the luxury market are spending a lot less as well. That spending fell 9.3% in February from a year earlier. That's according to Citi's analysis of its credit card transactions.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Costco, who usually has a customer base that skews towards higher income, have said last week that they've seen a big shift towards lower cost proteins, stuff like ground beef and poultry. So you are seeing it just across the board because we also saw the CEO of Dollar General come out and say, hey, Consumers are feeling very squeezed right now. So did Kohl's.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
They say lower end is also very squeezed. So you're hearing that word tossed around that we were hearing a few years ago, which is choiceful. Consumers are becoming choiceful with how they're spending their money once more. So you are right. Kohl's was our dog week just because it had a really rough week, but it is emblematic of the whole retail sector at this point.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Ben Amedda secured a key legal victory against a whistleblower, leaving the future of her memoir in doubt. It's Friday, March 14th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Let's move on. Formula One is back in Melbourne this weekend, kicking off the season down under for the first time since the pandemic. At the center of this upcoming season is seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton, who swapped Mercedes silver for Ferrari red, marrying the sport's most recognizable star with its biggest brand.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Will he contend for a record-breaking eighth championship, or will it be more photo shoots than photo finishes? It's a storyline you can only cook up in a Netflix studio, which is pretty much exactly what execs in a Netflix studio were hoping for.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Netflix's drive to survive transformed Formula One into must-see TV, birthing an entire genre of sports-centered docuseries from golf's full swing to tennis' breakpoint. And as this new season begins, every Max Verstappen poll, personal feud, and pit stop maneuver will be documented for millions of fans who may never even watch the actual races.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
which, Neil, is sort of an issue because races averaged just 1.1 million weekly viewers in the U.S. and peaked at just under 2 million in 2023. Both those peaks and those averages are well below IndyCar and way below the numbers NASCAR pulls in.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So, Neil, lots of storylines to look out for as drivers enter the grid on Sunday, from Sir Lewis to Netflix's supposed influence to the fact that maybe F1 isn't as big as you might think. It's lights out and away they go.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
I do think that they need it too, because there was some media analysis done when, you know, Caitlin Clark was still tearing up college basketball and they were like the three games that Caitlin Clark played to end her collegiate career.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
They brought in more viewers than the entire formula one season did over all 24 races in the U S. So when you're talking about a influence on something like Caitlin Clark is an order of magnitude above what the entire sport of formula one is. So,
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
I do think there was this time where everyone was watching Drive to Survive, probably during the pandemic, and it became this thing where, like, oh, this series just has catapulted this sport into the American mainstream. That's not quite the case. That being said, the Miami Grand Prix, the Las Vegas Grand Prix, the Austin Grand Prix, these are all events that are very well attended.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
They are these big business moneymakers in the cities that they descend upon. So it's not like this is some... Really tiny thing, but it's also probably not as big as you might think.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Have you heard of Invesco QQQ? It contains 100 of the most innovative companies in the NASDAQ, so you can sleep easy knowing that the future is yours to access. An ETF as a sleeping aid. Who would have thought? It's been tracking the NASDAQ 100 for over 25 years and helping people access better information.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. A federal judge has ordered President Trump to reinstate thousands of federal workers. who were dismissed during his administration, flipping the efforts of Doge on its head.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
In Maryland, a judge ruled that the layoffs violated federal protocols, ordering thousands of dismissed probationary employees to be reinstated temporarily, while a California judge called the terminations a, quote, sham and demanded immediate rehiring across six major agencies, including the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and Defense.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Both judges emphasize that while workforce reductions are legal, they must follow established legal processes. This might make for some awkward return to office moments.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Right. And you did see stock futures creep up a little bit this morning. They are green as of the time that we're recording this because, yeah, a government shutdown is just disruptive now. whichever way you cut it.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
There was also rumblings too, though, that not passing the bill is exactly something that Elon and Doge might want because a government shutdown could expedite this goal of downsizing the federal government.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So counterintuitively, it looks like it's very likely that this spending bill will pass with support from across the aisle, precisely because, you know, Democrats do not want a government shutdown to aid in Doge's efforts.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
I'm just going to come out and say it. Astronomers are being way too lenient in their definition of what constitutes a moon. I need more than just rocks that are a few miles across. I do need some more substantial moons. Maybe it's because our moon is 2,159 miles across. So I don't like that Saturn's picking up all these extra moons in the process when they're not big enough in my mind.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
But also one thing that I think astronomers are going to run into is that right now the current Whoever discovers the moons get the chance to name them. They get the rights to name them. But the current naming scheme for Saturn's moons is based on characters from the Norse mythology.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So we are now probably so deep in the Asgardian pantheon that they might have to expand to, I don't know, Greek or something at this point because there's only so many Thors and Odins out there. You're going to have to find a different pantheon at this point. It made me realize that we don't name our moon.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Yeah, see? Because it's big enough. It's not some of these one mile across rocks. I don't know. I'm hating on Saturn right now. You're doing great, Saturn.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
I want you to share the podcast with someone who was really into F1 when Drive to Survive first came out, but has fallen off in recent years because I know there is a lot of you. So I'm going for a big total addressable market here, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Seriously, even a bottle of Prosecco that you might pop for $15, that's now getting up to $45. So that's what a 200% tariff does. It adds 200% to the cost. French wine producers have typically been in this very chummy relationship with the United States. It's their biggest export market. But right now, the vibe's at...
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Grand Chateaus and vineyards in Europe are not good right now because when you talk to American wine importers, if you are an American wine importer, you have to decide whether, one, to pass on those costs to consumers or, two, just stop importing altogether. It used to be this love-love relationship, but now it's a lose-lose relationship.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
And then the economic chaos unleashed by these tariffs, even though it is affecting a very niche industry, we did see stocks fall again yesterday. Broadly, they fell 1.4% on Thursday. That's Now we have reached a correction, which means that we are down 10% from February's all-time high.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
We've now fully erased all the post-November election gains, so we're back at levels not seen since September of last year. I mean, it sounds ridiculous to say, but we're at levels only seen last year in September. In response to all this, though, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant basically shrugged his shoulders.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Yesterday, he said that the White House is focused on, quote, the real economy and not concerned about a little market volatility. In response to these specific proposed 200% tariffs on EU alcohol products, he said... I'm not sure why that's a big deal for markets.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So the overall vibe and messaging we're getting from percent and the White House is that the current trade war and tariffs are meant to create long-term economic health and that small market corrections might be necessary to shore up the broader economy for success.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Meta really doesn't want you to read this book. The social media company is taking legal action to prevent a former employee from promoting her new memoir. The book, titled Careless People, is written by Sarah Wynn Williams, a former Meta executive who uses its pages to provide a detailed account of her six years at the company.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
It touches on global controversy since as the platform's role in Myanmar, its influence during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and lobs sexual misconduct allegations at former CEO Sheryl Sandberg and Joel Kaplan as chief global affairs officer. Obviously, these are things Meta doesn't want out in the public discourse.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
A Meta spokesperson responded, stating that the book contains, quote, a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims and false accusations about our executives. But Meta went a step further, filing an arbitration demand against Wynn-Williams. saying that the claims in her book violate a non-disparagement agreement she signed when she left the company. And they succeeded.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
An emergency arbitrator ruled this week that Wynn Williams can no longer promote or distribute the memoir or make any disparaging, critical, or otherwise detrimental comments. The two parties are now set to enter private arbitration. Neil, the filing doesn't stop the publisher, Flatiron Books, from continuing its publication and promotion of the book.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So it's not like it will just disappear off shelves. But still, this was a legal win for Meta.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
This does feel like a more forceful public repudiation of A former employee's tell-all, because you are right, like Francis Hagan last year or two years ago was another whistleblower that kind of they went through this past thing.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
But they usually don't pursue legal action to try to reduce the promotion or publication of a book, especially because in 2023, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that It's generally illegal for companies to offer severance agreements that actually prohibit workers from making disparaging statements about their former employers.
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So that includes stuff like sexual harassment or sexual assault accusations. So it's interesting that they found that there was any legal standing here given that NLRB rules. kind of ruling from a few years ago. So just fascinating that this was one particular book that they did take this pretty severe action against.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
That is a lot. And I was thinking about my own training with pie in the past because I think a lot of people have gone through a pie phase. Maybe that's just me. But this one technique that I recommend using is called the memory palace. You've probably seen it in Sherlock Holmes show from a few years back. But it involves creating an imaginary place in your mind where you sort of
Morning Brew Daily
Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
I don't know. The Giants metaphor is apt because Intel is in a struggling place right now. I will say, though, that so Lip was on or Tan was on Intel's board until August 2024, where he left after having differences with how to position the business with the now ousted CEO, Pat Gelsinger. which might be exactly why he appeals to Wall Street, because Tan frequently pushed for a better AI strategy.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
He wanted faster decision-making. He wanted to break up the notoriously bureaucratic organization. So one source told the editor of Yahoo Finance that if anyone can save Intel, it's Lip, but it will take years and a partner. So it does look like he is the man for the job. But I also find it ironic, too, because over the last month, Intel has actually been rising a little bit,
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
on the hopes that they will separate their foundry business, which was this big push into taking on TSMC and fabricating their own chips. And Wall Street was never really sold on them. That was a big Gelsinger thing to do. But then Lip Bhutan has come in and said that he's signaling he's probably going to stick with that plan, and yet the stock still rallied.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
So I don't really know what the stock is rallying on at this point, because those are two kind of conflicting pieces of data right there. Maybe it's just that they think this really is the man to turn Intel around.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
store these mnemonic images that represent strings of numbers. So for instance, you might take a stroll through that location. For me, it's like my childhood bedroom is what I use in order to, you know, do a pie recitation contest. And it worked pretty well for me. I got up to like 50 to a hundred digits. I still got, you know, 50 in the memory palace locked in today.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
For a long time, Kohl's has been a store that you run into for socks, but somehow leave also with a blender. But lately, fewer people are making that blender impulse buy or buying socks. The department store reported a rough end to 2024 with sales plunging 6.5% and profits cut nearly in half.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Kohl's also warned investors that next year looks even gloomier with a much weaker sales forecast for the year ahead, causing the stock to plummet by more than 27% this week. CEO Ashley Buchanan still fresh on the job.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Amidst a lot of the company's wounds were largely self-inflicted, Kohl's went all in on chasing younger customers by adding Sephora beauty counters, expanding its trendy homes good sections, and nixing popular coupons. But instead of attracting new shoppers, these moves just ended up confusing and frustrating its loyal customer base. But also Kohl's issues are far from unique across retail.
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Trade War Spills Over Champagne & Meta Tries to Slow Tell-All Book
Companies like Macy's, Target, American Eagle, and Dollar General are sounding the alarm about cautious shoppers squeezed by inflation and hesitant to spend. Lower income customers especially are cutting back, prioritizing groceries and rent over discretionary purchases. Neil, Kohl's had a rough one this week, but it's far from the only one running into these issues. Consumer angst is here.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
So that's why analysts were like, all of a sudden, Robinhood is kind of looking like a very well-positioned company. It does have a long way to go to reach the big boys that have trillions of dollars in assets on their platform. But right now, Robinhood is certainly aging gracefully into its teenage years.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
It sounds like the event contracts are pricing in a 100% chance of us going to break right now. Do you ever feel like you can feel yourself getting older? Literally all the time. Just ask my lower back.
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Or a headache the next morning.
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You would probably get a little hungry by the end. But also, what other activities derive a similar amount of chemical satisfaction? I was thinking maybe a 45-second firm handshake might get it done. Or, you know, two hours worth of high fives. Just little bursts of oxytocin here and there. But thank you for sharing these intimacy plans on this day dedicated to love.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
People like having personal chauffeurs for their burritos. Total orders are now up 735% over the past five years. It's not just that DoorDash is executing, which it has been very well for a long time now. It's also that there's just a lot of demand for food delivery in general. Just look at the results from Uber's delivery segment last week. It also beat expectations.
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DoorDash is a much larger player, though it controls traffic. two-thirds of the U.S. meal delivery market. That is triple the share that Uber Eats has. So I am curious to see how it does going forward because these two companies have been kind of avoiding each other for most of their early lifetime. DoorDash initially went very hard focused on suburbs. Uber Eats
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Meanwhile, went very hard and focused on urban areas. So now the two are mixing a little bit more. They're stepping into each other's territory. So I do think we might see another, you know, sort of food delivery war start to cook up. But DoorDash is cooking.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
In the Zerp area, those 0% interest rates definitely helped start them. So a lot of people are saying they have these enduring moats because we're not going to see an era like that to raise capital again. So, yeah. We do miss the discounts. The discounts were incredible. The millennial subsidized lifestyle. My dog of the week is Reddit.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
On the surface, Reddit's earnings this week were pretty solid. 101 million daily active users in Q4, up 39% year over year. And a solid beat on revenue expectations should have made investors happy. But instead, shares fell more than 15% on Wednesday. The culprit, according to CEO Steve Huffman, Google tweaked its algorithm.
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which led to fewer Reddit posts hitting that SEO sweet spot to get a boost in search results. That means when you search for something like Severance Dead Seal Explained, Reddit posts might come up a little lower in Google's pecking order.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Huffman tried to assuage investors' fear during the earnings call, explaining that Google's algorithm changes take place two times a year and that this one is not the first and not the last. Still, an annoying development for a company whose shares had been up 23% so far in 2025.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
I think I might try it out later this evening with my girlfriend. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Sometimes running an international business just feels like being stuck in a giant maze.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Yeah, Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, said that this one was particularly interesting because they saw this immediate swing downwards, but then right after they saw recovery towards the end of the quarter. So it is sometimes you live and die by these algorithmic changes, but they are pretty adept at navigating them at this point.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
And it is definitely a symbiotic relationship because most people just treat Google as almost like a wrapper to get to Reddit search results. They were like, this is the only place I'm finding real verifiable results, especially in the age of AI. So very interesting to see the two kind of dance around each other.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
They both need each other, but also one changes affects the other pretty more intensely than you'd expect. Now let's sprint to the finish with some more headlines you may have missed. I hope you were productive from January 19th until now because TikTok is back and available to download in both the Apple and Google app stores as of yesterday.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Remember, after a law was passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, the tech giants took the app down back in January so as not to run afoul of the legislation and rack up huge fines in the process. But yesterday, just about a month after it was banned, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a letter to Apple and Google pinky promising that they won't be punished for hosting the app.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Taking the Trump administration at their word, the two decided to bring the app back and now we can all swipe away again as Trump tries to work out a deal by early April to address the national security concerns around the app's Chinese ownership.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
When Theseus entered the labyrinth, he unspooled strings so he could find his way back. And that's where Wise Business comes in.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Donald Trump Jr. wants to see just how fast roided-up athletes can run and is putting his money up to find out. Yesterday, the president's son announced a significant investment in the Enhance Games through his venture capital firm, 1789 Capital.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
The Enhance Games, best described as the Steroid Olympics, are a multi-sport event that will allow athletes to compete while using performance-enhancing drugs. Trump Jr. views the enhanced games not as a sideshow project, but a disruptive force in sports, challenging established norms and offering up what he calls real competition, real freedom, and real records being smashed.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
This is about excellence, innovation, and American dominance on the world stage. something the MAGA movement is all about.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
I think the logic, too, is that if you can experiment and try to make these athletes superhuman, potentially you could pass down some of those findings to overall public health. Bali G. Servasanan is another big investor. He said that technology will make athletes superhuman. That will make everyone superhuman.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
That's why I was the first investor in Enhance Game, to improve human health for all of us. So that's potentially another thread that you can trace back through these investments, that they do want to pass on these findings to the broader public health sector.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
This organization is not in a great spot right now, but I think I know how to fix the mafia. Step one, call everyone back to in-person work. None of this remote work stuff. Step two, layoffs of the bottom 5% of employees. Yeah, that's right. Institute performance-based layoffs. Step three, mafia AI. Improve efficiency with internal AI tools. Step four, movie night.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Everyone watches Godfather every single Friday. Step five, profit, I guess. I think that's how you reform the mafia from top to bottom.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Forgot to get a Valentine's Day card? I got you, kings and queens. Simply send your boo this episode and write, Roses are red. Violets are blue. This episode of Morning Brew Daily is best listened to with you.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Remember all those other tariffs the Trump administration has talked about? Small potatoes. Yesterday, the president unveiled what he deemed the big one, a set of reciprocal duties meant to even out trade deficits America has with other countries. Federal agencies are taking it slow, initially conducting studies on how to
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
update tariffs before implementing them in April, but nearly every country that conducts international trade will likely be affected, especially the likes of India, Japan, and the EU. It's time to be reciprocal. You'll be hearing that word a lot, Trump said earlier this week. If they charge us, we charge them. This reciprocal approach extends the U.S.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
's trade wars to far more countries outside of just China, but we'll have to wait and see if this strategy is to try and extract concessions, as Trump has been known to do, or a legitimate attempt to raise import barriers and non-tax revenue in the process.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Either way, implementing a new tariff code is a massive undertaking that will require re-evaluating hundreds of countries' current policies in less than two months. Neil, the big one is here.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Let's take a step back and think about what the current system is and why Trump wants to remake it. Remember, we are currently in a global trade environment. Following World War II, a lot of the most powerful economies and countries in the world signed this thing called the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trades, GATT. That ushered in this era of scratching each other's back.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
The agreement was eventually turned into and absorbed by the World Trade Organization. So for a long time, this word tariff has been Kind of this ugly word because you wanted to supercharge global trade. You wanted to open up a lot of these pathways.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
But now the Trump administration thinks that higher tariffs is this pathway towards bringing manufacturing back to the United States and also potentially boosting revenue that you're going to lose if he implements these tax cuts. So there's been a lot of criticism of these plans, obviously, but this is kind of what Trump wants. has been pushing for.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
was confirmed as the nation's top health official, while everyone from cereal makers to drug makers are bracing for change. It's Friday, February 14th. Happy Valentine's Day, and let's ride.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
He wants to even the playing field on the global level, which really does upend the system we've been operating under since post-World War II.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
And one of the other final critiques here is that if you insist that we are going to match your tariff rate, we're going to be reciprocal with whatever you're charging us, we charge you, then you basically are handing over your entire trade strategy to other nations because they say, oh, you're going to match us. we're going to jack imports up to, or the tariff rate up to 20%.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Now you have to jack it up to 20%. So you're like almost taking your agency away when dictating how you want to deal with other countries. So yeah, there is just widely varying tariff rates, depending on which country you're even talking about. I mean, India has tariffs of 60% on automobiles and flowers, 50% on apples, coin, apples, corn, and motorcycles.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
These are domestic industries that they want to protect. So I, Let's go back to this spreadsheet. It is going to be quite this undertaking because there's just so many different industries, so many different countries that you have to sort through and come up with a cohesive plan.
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Yeah, I think there are a lot of phones ringing off the hook in Washington right now who are trying to fight figure out what to do under this new kind of purview that RFK Jr. has. Let's start with vaccine makers because that's been a very hot-button topic under Kennedy's ideas there have been pretty controversial.
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Remember, he called the COVID-19 shot that Pfizer produced one of the deadliest vaccines ever made. He's walked back some of those comments since. But a lot of these companies that still derive a lot of revenue from vaccines are nervous right now. I mean, Merck has an HPV shot. That's this company's second best-selling product. Moderna's entire business is wrapped up in vaccines.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
forming various vaccines. And it's not just manufacturers that are potentially at risk here too. CVS said in a recent annual report that regulatory changes or consumer sentiment shift for immunizations may hurt demand at some of its shores. So if you are a healthcare company that does rely on vaccines as one of your mainstreams of revenue, then you are definitely a little nervous that RFK Jr.
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And then finally, one other idea that we should speak about is that RFK is not a fan of weight loss drugs. You know, Wagovi, Ozempic, the GLP-1 class of drugs that has absolutely taken the world by storm. He said, when I'm working the next administration, I will address our sick food system. Instead, he wants to address, you know, the root cause rather than something papering over it.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
set up a fight with one of Trump's other top advisors, Elon Musk. Elon Musk has been extremely supportive of these weight loss drugs. He went as far as to say, nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan, and quality of life for Americans than making GLP-1 drugs super low cost to the public.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
So that is a potential point of friction that we could see develop between two of Trump's top lieutenants. Robinhood, the trading platform best known for the meme stock boom, is growing up. It reported earnings earlier this week, and it was all highlights. The company posted its first-ever annual profit and revenue more than doubled. It's been quite the turnaround.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
After it went public, Robinhood withered away, losing 80% of its IPO market cap, but it staged a huge comeback since, with its shares more than quadrupling over the past year. How did it right the ship? Firstly, by attracting more serious investors away from competitors like Fidelity and Charles Schwab.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
CEO Vlad Tenev said his company finished the fourth quarter with $1.3 billion in net transfers, more than any other brokerage. It also rode a crypto trading tsunami. Its crypto-based revenue jumped in insane 700% year over year to reach 3%. $358 million. Neil, shares finished up another 14% yesterday. Robinhood and its merry band of crypto degens is cooking.
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Right. There's kind of two angles you can look at here. One, it rode this animal spirits wave really well. Customers traded $14 billion in crypto in the third quarter on its platform. Sounds like a lot. You go to the fourth quarter, that number jumps to $71 billion. So just a massive uptick in crypto trading. But you're right.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
A lot of the reason why analysts are a little bit more bullish on it is that Robinhood is maturing as a company. It has these very sober offerings. It offers retirement accounts now. It has that credit card that it launched. And also, those funded accounts that are subscribing to its gold service, that is a very stable form of revenue that doesn't wildly fluctuate alongside the crypto market.
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Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
Okay, lots of thoughts here, Neil. First, are there compounding returns if six seconds of kiss and 20 seconds of hug release X amount of octytocin? That would a 60-second kiss and a 200-second hug release 10 times that amount? If I kiss someone for six hours, am I going to be the happiest person on earth? That was my first question. Probably be a little hungry.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
To them, fries were the next logical step as they searched for a craveable item that are designed to keep customers coming back. Now, the company is still losing money, $90 million last year, so it's not like Ripple fries can save everything, but it's a bet that the salty snack can boost margins and drive foot traffic to continue its evolution beyond those pricey green bowls.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
I think you're definitely right on that, but also this term, craveable, is a term that industry execs use in the fast food industry, which is something like McDonald's fries, that you just go in, you probably add them to your order because they're good, they're salty, you know what you're going to get. Sweetgreen's been looking for a craveable menu item like that.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So if your job is hosting a morning business news podcast, maybe not so great. So after weighing all of that, I realized I have no strong feelings, and thank goodness for auto-updating clocks. Now a word from our sponsor, Invesco QQQ. Neil, I've been thinking about efficiency lately. Oh, finally getting to inbox zero, are we?
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
They want to drive these repeat purchases. They also want to differentiate themselves a little bit, too, that say, hey, we're not just salads. We can offer that comfort that fast food provides, but with a much healthier take on it. They're trying to trademark this name, Ripple Fries. Apparently, they're pretty good, too.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
I was reading some reviews of it, and they said the biggest thing that you take away is, one, it tastes pretty much like a french fry, but two, you can use your phone afterwards because there's not this layer of grease on it, and that comes from the air frying of it.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So I do think that it will be relatively popular because of the fact that you don't feel like, I said you're weighed down with a metric ton of grease. That is kind of the feeling they're trying to avoid with these fries.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
I mean, they are biting their nails and the nerves are definitely filtering through this industry right now because the scale and the speed of these cuts have been pretty unprecedented so far. More than 30 contracts have already been canceled in just six weeks. That is more than in any full year in recent history.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So what's being targeted to, while some of these modernization contracts will definitely survive, like projects where you're updating IT infrastructure. Things like DI initiatives are on the chopping block. You have seen already explicitly linked diversity initiatives have been axed as well. So what does it mean for the consulting industry? It is just a scary time for it.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Industry analysts are expecting zero growth in 2025 with potential revenue declines in 2026 because as these contracts phase out, the next logical step too is that You might have to reduce your bids for them in the future because if there's just not as much demand from it from the government, then how are you going to bid? If you're Deloitte, how do you win out over Accenture?
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Well, some company called Morning Brew keeps sending me newsletters, so that's not happening anytime soon. No, I'm talking about the Invesco QQQ ETF. Ah, the Swiss army knife of ETFs, efficient and easy to trade. I prefer to think of it as the Toby Howell of ETFs. Innovative, forward-looking, super smart, and it's over 25 years old. See, we're basically the same.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
You might have to lower your bids for some of these contracts, and we're already seeing that happen. So just a major shakeup of an industry that has been kind of steady and stable, you know, you can say, like piggybacking off the government for years and decades.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
for years with lower reimbursement rates for prescription drugs, but then you also have this new competition from Amazon. The front ends of drugstores just compete with everyone. When I say everyone, I mean Amazon, but you've seen pressure from larger competitors like Target, even Dollar General stores when they're opened near these pharmacies hurt chains in rural areas.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
So that's just even the front ends of drugstores. We're not even talking about the back ends here who dole out prescriptions. So it's just been very, very tough. And it has been this long and winding road from a $100 billion company to getting bought out for around $10 billion today.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Yeah, this is a big transportation nexus that was halted. I mean, they're canceling Eurostar chains from France to Britain, Belgium, Netherlands. That served over 226 million travelers in 2023. So it is definitely not The place that you want to find a bomb, obviously. Speaking of places not to find one, you said that this was a relatively common thing that happened last month.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
More than 175 practice bombs that were used for training in the Second World War were found under a children's playground in northern England. So of the two places you do not want to find an unexploded World War II bomb, I think a train station and a children's playground are pretty high up that list.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Speaking of Paris, a lot of Americans are heading that way, but only if their 401ks have more than 401k in it. The CEO of Air France, Ben Smith, said the airline had been seeing amazing demand for its business in first class seats, primarily coming from wealthy American travelers. It's unbelievable what Americans are paying to come over here, he told the Financial Times.
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With Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosures in podcast description.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
As such, Air France has shifted its business model to focus on wealthy yanks in the premium end of the market. It is charging $24,000 for one leg of a first-class ticket between New York and Paris in April. It is also launching a new updated first-class cabin this month.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Neil, it looks like people going on holiday are actually replacing corporate travelers as airlines' chief moneymakers who take up those seats in the front of the cabin.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Denmark is officially breaking up with snail mail. After 400 years, the company's state-run postal service, Postnord, is shutting down letter deliveries for good. Postnord says that the move comes after a 90% drop in letter volume since 2000 and the increasing digitalization of society. It's cutting 1,500 jobs and ditching 1,500 post boxes as it focuses on package delivery going forward.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
95% of Danes already use digital mail, so most of the country won't lose sleep over it. But the 271,000 people who still rely on physical letters, many of them elderly, are left with a lot of stamps and nothing to send. Neil, 400 years of mail delivery, poof, gone. All because the youths aren't writing their thank you notes.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Yeah, it is not just Denmark. Germany's Deutsche Post is slashing 8,000 jobs. UK's Royal May is cutting services to save costs. And then Trump has floated the idea of privatizing the U.S. Postal Office as well. So you are right. This is not just a Denmark issue. No one's sending letters anymore.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
You can pick whoever you want to share it with, but I want you to share the pod with someone via a letter. Together, we can all save snail mail.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Well, unfortunately, will these cuts show up in this jobs report? The answer is probably not. February's official jobs report. will not fully reflect these doge cuts that are coming through just due to timing. March and April are probably going to be the real test as these layoffs continue to filter in and these federal cutbacks do ripple throughout the economy.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
They really haven't shown up in any official government data yet. The Labor Department said yesterday that the number of Americans filing for jobless benefits actually fell 21,000 to 221,000. for the week ending March 1st. So these are just lagging a little bit.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
You'll probably see that unemployment rate stay pretty low, pretty solid at 4%, but that could change very fast because we just need to dive into this Challenger Grand Christmas report a little bit. Some of the percent increases in layoffs when it comes to government jobs are astounding. That 62,000 government job cut number represents a 41,311% increase from last year. So
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
we're in unprecedented territory when it comes to shedding jobs. Also, the nonprofits and the companies that rely on those federal contracts are shedding jobs now, too. So you do start to see just how big the ripple effects could be from these Doge cost-cutting efforts.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Some forecasts are suggesting over 500,000 job losses by the end of the year, which would actually erase a quarter of all job growth from 2024. So that obviously is a pretty solidly large number right there. I mean, a quarter of all job gains from the previous year. Also, one interesting effect of this is as federal workers are kind of getting laid off.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Then a Jack and Coke in Canada is now just a Coke after Jack Daniels got caught in trade war crossfire. It's Friday, March 7th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
States are stepping in and trying to recruit them because they actually have open positions they want to fill. New York launched a Doe said you're fired, we say you're hired campaign, trying to lure some of those federal workers to 7,000 open state jobs they have. Maryland is offering job assistance programs.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Their officials are admitting there's not enough one-to-one replacements in the state roles to replace all these federal workers. But it is interesting to see them, just like any other tech company sometimes, sneaking in and saying, hey, you're not working for the federal government anymore. Come work for the state government. We have a lot of open positions.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Canada is weaning itself off America's booze. It's not an intervention, but a counter move in the trade war between North American frenemies. Canadian provinces are yanking Jack Daniels, Kentucky bourbon, and California wine off store shelves in retaliation to Trump's 25% tariffs on Canadian imports. It's prohibition, but just for made in America drinks. Naturally, U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
liquor execs are losing their minds. The CEO of Jack Daniels Maker Brown Foreman called it, quote, worse than a tariff because while tariffs make things more expensive, this just straight up deletes their sales. Ontario alone carries 3,600 American alcohol products before Premier Doug Ford declared them, quote, done, gone.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
This is not great news for Kentucky, where bourbon is a $9 billion industry supporting over 23,000 jobs. And while Brown Foreman insists it can shrug off the Canadian losses since they only make up about 1% of its total sales, things get dicey when you factor in the post-pandemic sales slump the industry was already going through. Turns out that international beef, Neil, does not
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
mixed very well with the spirits industry.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Yeah, and even though Brown Form is trying to shrug it off a little bit, Canada is the U.S. 's largest export market for alcohol. Over $763 million worth of American wine, beer, spirits end up there, get sold there. And this is a very interconnected industry. So something that happens in Canada, too, will result in potentially job losses in the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, which has the acronym DISCUS, which is a very cool acronym, Estimates these tariffs could result in the loss of over 31,000 U.S. jobs. Obviously, that's coming from a perspective of someone advocating for the industry.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
But yeah, I mean, Kentucky governor has also spoken out against these tariffs, calling them incredibly difficult and challenging for his state. So it is interesting how decisions made by the premier of Ontario filter all the way down to, you know, Kentucky's bourbon industry.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Yesterday, Intuitive Machines made one small step for man and one giant leap for private companies landing spacecrafts on the moon. Maybe. Intuitive Machines' Athena lander was supposed to touch down near the moon's south pole, making it the second private company this week to pull off a lunar landing. But as the clock hit landing time, mission control was met with a confusing situation.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
The craft didn't crash. Mission Control was receiving data from the spacecraft as it touched down, but it was clear that the spacecraft was not working quite as expected. NASA and Intuitive Machines cut their live stream without confirming whether the lander was fully operational, and a later press conference did nothing to clear things up.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
If this all sounds familiar, it's because Athena's twin craft, Odysseus, did the same thing last year, landing successfully but then tipping over like a lunar Jenga tower. Engineers are now scrambling to figure out if Athena stayed upright or if history just repeated itself.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
NASA is footing the bill for this mission as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which hires private companies to deliver science experiments to the moon. Athena is carrying a drill to search for frozen water, a tiny rover to test a Nokia cell phone network, and a rocket-powered hopper designed to explore tricky terrain.
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
But it's also carrying the hopes and dreams of the Texas-based private company, whose stock cratered as a result of the craft's struggles to land near a lunar crater.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Actually, wait, in this case, it actually is. But you did mention the Firefly spacecraft. They have this little rivalry going. They're both Texas-based companies. They're both private companies pursuing moon landing missions. And it just so happened that they did them within the same calendar week. Firefly's landing on Sunday was deemed successful.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Intuitive Machines' Athena lander, that fate is unclear. Part of it is due to the design of each spacecraft. The design of Athena is very tall and narrow, while the Blue Ghost lander from Firefly is short and squat. So it's literally because Intuitive is taller that it's more likely to tip over. And these
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
The craft that it sent up this time is pretty much an identical copy of the one it sent last time. So what's the sign of Insanity doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results?
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Maybe they just need to go the Saquon Barkley route, make this thing shorter, make it squatter, make the center of gravity lower because it keeps tipping over, although we'll see what actually happened in this case because we still don't really quite know. Up next, it is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Living in the future. I was making a little pros and cons list to figure out how I felt about daylight savings time because I always get confused. For the pros, it's good for golf, great for evening picnics, great for people who never change their clocks. For cons, it's very bad for parents taking their kids to school in the morning, also tough for morning people in general.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Neil, you've had the chance to work with plenty of leaders in your career. What traits do you think are most important?
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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
And for all those influential leaders out there, there's the Range Rover Sport. That's definitely a match made in heaven. Absolutely. Each model strikes an ideal balance between on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capability, sophisticated refinement, and visceral power.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
For my Stock of the Week, it built its brand on kale and quinoa. but now it's making a play in the French fry game. Sweetgreen, the fast casual salad chain, just introduced Ripple Fries, an air fried, avocado oil coated take on French fries that are supposed to taste great and not weigh you down with a metric ton of grease. And Wall Street is digging it so far.
Morning Brew Daily
Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
Shares popped 5% this week after the company unveiled the fries. making a rare win for a stock that's been on a 34% slide since early February. On paper, this move makes sense. Sweetgreen has been trying to break out of the $18 salad box for years now, rolling out dinner-friendly protein plates in 2023 and adding steak permanently to the menu in 2024.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So, Neil, when you see an announcement of layoffs under the premise that a company will redirect those resources towards AI, it's pretty clear that the market will like it.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah. Klarna is another big name that has cut a lot of employees to make space and replace them with AI. They say they've saved $10 million annually for using AI for its marketing needs. And then very ironically, Klarna also drastically reduced their usage of software platforms like Salesforce and Workday and replaced them with AI. So it's not just humans.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It also is the other software stack that usually are used to run these big organizations. So It is cuts all the way down, and it is interesting to see how these layouts are just met so positively by the market. Whenever you say those magic words, it's like we are cutting costs in this area, putting it towards this area, being AI instead. The market usually tends to like that.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It absolutely was. It is kind of the end of an era, too. So you can blame a lot of things. Obviously, you can blame interest rates, inflation, supply chain delays. Those are all very valid. But the last thing that its CEO said was shifting consumer preferences, which I think you cannot ignore either. I really think that these brands kind of rode the wave of the board short era, the skateboard era.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So I've kind of already done this. If I'm willing to devote that much time to making scrambled eggs, why wouldn't I spend half an hour doing this method? We have to try it.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
But now if you go to the beach, for instance, you're seeing a lot of thigh out there. Five-inch inseams. I haven't seen an inseam longer than five inches in a long time. So I really think the thighs killed Billabong, killed Quicksilver, killed Volcom, these brands that kind of rose a very specific aesthetic to prominence. But yeah, they aren't going, they're not dying per se.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
You just won't see them in the malls anymore where you were taking all your dates, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It is iconic, though, and it is sad because it is aging. It recently underwent a big renovation to try to modernize it, but New Orleans is one of the smallest cities that has an NFL team in the country. It's always punched above its weight when it comes to hosting events because the city is a very fun backdrop for things like a Super Bowl. That being said, it just might be over...
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It's been lofty, but that perfect texture, that velvet yolk, I think it's worth the extra time. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise Business. Neil, fun fact, I grew six inches my junior year of high school.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
You know, it's just over its head at this point because these events are so big now. Vegas looks like it's a better place, you know, take that mantle because it's got more hotel rooms. It's more of a walkable city. It's got multiple things within a certain radius as well. So New Orleans was, you know, kind of the de facto party hosting destination.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Now it looks like maybe that time is coming to an end.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Another storyline heading into the big game is a switch-up happening in the end zone. As Saquon pounds in his fifth touchdown of the game, you might notice that the NFL has switched out its on-field slogan and racism for Choose Love instead.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
An NFL spokesperson said that the reason behind the change is tied to the New Year's terrorist attack in New Orleans, as well as other recent tragedies like the LA wildfires and the plane crash in D.C.,
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
However, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did recently reaffirm the league's commitment to DEI in his annual Super Bowl address, including policies like the Rooney Rule, which require teams to interview minority candidates for coaching and executive positions. You know, this is the first time since 2021 that people watching will not see and racism stenciled on the field.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So many, but that is part of growth. You gotta make changes.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And if you grow internationally, whew, that can be a real pain.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I believe them all, especially the fairy dust sprinkling. I do want to talk about the Chiefs and the fact that the refs had to come out and say, the league had to come out and say, no, the refs are not colluding. One thing that they pointed to is that there are 17 officiating crews consisting of 138 officials that...
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
refereed Chiefs games and the league was like, do you really think they're all colluding to assist one team? That being said, though, there is some data that you could point to that say maybe the Chiefs do get more favorable calls, especially in the playoffs. If you look at the 2023 and 2024 postseasons, The Chiefs have been called for 16 fewer penalties for 160 fewer yards than their opponents.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
But what you have to look at is how much of those penalties add to the win probability of each game. And over those six games, their win probability has jumped 27% based off the calls that they have gotten. That is just behind the Green Bay Packers amongst all teams.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So it is interesting that you can point to their postseason runs since Patrick Mahomes really took over and look at how much win probability
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
was added the final thing i will say on this though you can go back to the 2013 to 2017 new england patriots and they got even more lopsided treatment than the current chiefs they were getting called for 22 fewer penalties 276 fewer yards than their opponents so i think basically whenever some team is good you something happens where the refs kind of contribute to that in some way so i
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It's trusted by over 600,000 businesses, big, small, and everything in between. Six inches, Toby, really? My poor knees, man. Needed wise for growing pains. For international payments that grow alongside you, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Do I believe the conspiracy theories? No, but just follow the data. That's all I'll say. Finally, sportsbooks are expecting $1.4 billion in legal wagers on Sunday's game, which would be a new record. And while a lot of those bets will likely be on the Chiefs for the Eagles to win, we want to surface some... prop bets you should be aware of.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Prop bets are those side bets that don't directly influence the outcome of the game, but are fun to root for nevertheless. Think, what color will the Gatorade be? Will the coin toss be heads or tails? So Neil, while I got you here, I'm going to get your thoughts on some of the more interesting prop bets this year. Up first, will the national anthem be longer or shorter than 120 seconds?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Some background, it is being performed this year by John Baptiste, a soul jazz musical genius. Are you taking the over or the under?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I love that pick. Unfortunately, I was going to pick everything opposite than you, but I do think John Baptiste is going to put on a show. All right, up next, what color will Tom Brady's tie be? Remember, Tom is announcing the big game for the first time. He's in the booth instead of on the field. Here are the options. Blue is the favorite at plus 175, and then in descending order of how likely.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
You have gray, no tie, red, black, green, pink, and then yellow at plus 1,200. What's your pick here, Neil?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I think, yeah, that's why you got to go black because there's so much better value there because blue and black, they're very similar, but black is plus 1,200 while blue is only plus 175. I'm chasing that extra value. All right, up next, what song will Kendrick Lamar perform first at the Super Bowl? He is the halftime performer. People are very excited.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Like a river overtaking the dam that once controlled its flow, Amazon is almost certainly set to bring in more revenue than its rival Walmart this past quarter for the first time ever. For a decade, Walmart has reigned as the world's biggest company by revenue.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Some of the favorites are Humble is the overwhelming favorite at minus 155. And then you have Not Like Us, you know, the summer anthem that was a distracted grade to Drake. Squabble Up and then Swimming Pools Drink. Any names standing out to you there, Neil?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, that's a lot of eyeballs looking at your diss tracks. Okay, I mentioned this one in the intro, but what color will the Gatorade be? Neil, you went very deep on this. The last two Super Bowls have been purple. Do you think purple three-peats?
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So wait, clear is a flavor. It's not just water that we're talking about?
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Gotcha. Okay, I said that was the last one, but I have one more question for you, actually, Neil. Will Travis Kelsey propose to Taylor Swift on the field? As of Thursday, the odds for no proposal were far better, minus 2,000 compared to plus 800 for a proposal. Does Travis get down on one knee?
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
But analysts project Wally World will announce sales of $180 billion when it reports earnings later this month, while Amazon announced yesterday that it had brought in $187 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter. This was a long time coming. had been growing at a 12% clip year over year, while Walmart's revenue growth was just 6%.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
I want you to share the pod with someone you are watching the Super Bowl with. Here's the plan. You send them this podcast. Tell them to listen to Neil's Prop Bet Picks. Then you bet the opposite on every single one of them. It's the Fade Neil Parlay, and you might make millions.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
As the two have duked it out for the title of biggest retailer in the world, they have also grown more similar. Amazon has invested heavily in groceries, while Walmart has dipped its toe in a Prime-like membership service, built out a robust e-commerce operation, and experimented with advertisement revenue.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
But Amazon still has an ace in the hole in the form of its cloud business, Amazon Web Services. AWS revenue has more than doubled since 2020 and now accounts for 17% of its total sales. Neil, despite reaching that $187 billion in quarterly sales to take it above its rival, Amazon did issue disappointing revenue forecasts, which caused its stock to slip, but isn't too much cause for alarm.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It's interesting because Walmart gets the bulk of its sales from selling stuff, and it's building up these side businesses like advertising, digital sales, etc. Whereas Amazon is competing in the retail sector, competing on speed of delivery and competing on price. And then all their profit comes from these web-based businesses, things like AWS. So it is
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Interesting to see how they are both in the same arena, but one just has this extra web-based thing that really takes it to the next level. Let's talk about Amazon's AI investment, because they kind of shocked investors yesterday when they reported earnings, saying that they do plan on spending $100 billion on AI, which is bigger than any other of its big tech peers.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Then a move over Walmart. A new company has laid claim to the title of highest revenue generating business in the world. It's Friday, February 7th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And it makes you a little cautious if you're an investor because we just went through that whole deep seek debacle where this Chinese AI company proved that you could train these models for a lot less. So then when you hear we're going to spend $100 billion on AI, we're like, wait a second, I thought
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
You would spend a little bit less because it's more efficient, so we don't have to spend as much money. But that being said, Andy Jassy was like, listen, we see this big outlay as a good sign for AWS. We wouldn't do it if we didn't think that it would lead to more revenue generation. You got to spend money to make money even at the highest echelons of corporate America.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So he still feels pretty confident that this is the right investment to make.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, definitely a state of limbo. The administration is looking at this pause in a different light. They don't see it as a pause. They're saying, actually, what a great way to increase the number of resignations. So it is increasing that time people can reply to that fork in the road email and say, I do want to take this deferred payment. That being said, we still don't know if it will be legal.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
There's a lot of challenges that we've covered on the show already about the fact that Congress has not passed a budget for funding beyond mid-March. So how can you guarantee that you will pay these employees beyond that date?
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So again, we have reached sort of a Trumpian limbo space where he issues an order, some court pushes back against it, and it leaves you in the lurch for a period of time where you're in that period of time right now.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Remember, this was very sensitive data that these Doge employees did get access to. Stuff like social security numbers, your birth date, home addresses, telephone numbers, bank account information, which was why there was kind of this uproar. Even if it was read-only access, which I'll actually touch on in a second, you don't want two people that weren't elected combing through this data.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
But then Wired actually did report later that they... probably didn't have only read-only access. They had direct access to the Treasury payment systems, this 25-year-old engineer. So it is a little scary to have these unelected people coming in and digging through this system that covers nearly all payments made by the U.S. government and that has a lot of sensitive data on U.S. citizens.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
Yeah, and actually that process is tied to a 1977 treaty, the treaty that actually originally handed over control of the canal to Panama. There's a clause in that treaty that requires equal treatment of all canal users, so you can't do these carve-outs for specific nations like Rubio and Trump are pushing for. What's ironic, too, is that over the past 26 years, the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
has paid $25 million for warships and submarines to pass through. That comes out to less than a million dollars a year. It is not a big chunk of change that we're talking about. It does seem to be more of like a symbolic victory that Trump and Rubio are pushing for. Because it just really isn't. I mean, look at the percent of the total ships that pass through each year. 0.5% are U.S. Navy vessels.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
So it just doesn't affect that many things, which is why it's interesting that kind of this administration is making such a big deal out of, you know, trying to get free passage for these ships. Up next, Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time. We know our listeners are above average. And that means you deserve above average everything, including your savings account interest rate.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
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On Public, you can build a multi-asset investment portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
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Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
It is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where Neil and I pick one stock that had a perfect sleep score and one stock that stayed up all night scrolling Instagram Reels. Neil, I won the pre-show game of ruin a movie by changing one letter in the title, so I am up first.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
When I first heard about this study, I was like 32 minutes, way too long. But then I thought a chalky yolk is one of the most tragic substances on earth. I would rather starve than eat a chalky yolk. So I am all in on this method. And I also happen to be a big fan of Gordon Ramsay's scrambled eggs cooking style, which also involves taking it on the heat, off the heat. Back on the heat.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
And my Stock of the Week is Workday, which saw its share price jump after it announced it was laying off 8.5% of its 20,000-plus employee workforce. Workday is a workforce management software that you'd ironically probably use to figure out if you wanted to lay off employees at your own business.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Dethroning Walmart? & DOGE Hits Snag in Treasury Overhaul
But the reason investors view its restructuring so positively is because its purpose is to increase its focus on AI investments. Workday is far from the only company rearranging their organizations to make room for AI. Most of big tech from Meta to Google to Salesforce have laid off employees to make room for the only two letters investors care about these days.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
The final countdown has a slew of bachelors from PE giants to big tech power players lining up to win the social media platform's final rose. Right now, the leader in the clubhouse, according to the Financial Times, is a deal that would spin off TikTok's U.S. business into a new entity called backed by investor powerhouses like Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone, and Silverlake.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Oracle would oversee U.S. data, while ByteDance would retain a minority stake under the 20% cap required by law. Meanwhile, Amazon entered the chat late in the game, making a Hail Mary bid via letter to the Trump administration. They joined a bizarrely wide field of other suitors, including Perplexity AI, which wants to rebuild the app's algorithm from scratch, mobile tech company AppLovin,
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
and even Mr. Beast, who says he's been approached by some backers to be the face of a bid. Whether a deal is actually completed by the deadline or the deadline is extended remains unclear, with a major sticking point being the app's all-important algorithm. ByteDance has floated an idea to license it out to new owners, while U.S. officials want it fully controlled domestically.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
What is clear, TikTok has become a geopolitical football to be tossed around until Trump can tush-push it across the finish line
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And what this map is good at is that it finally gets away from reality a little bit. It's a lot more abstract than the previous more geographically representative map and it prioritizes visual clarity over pure accuracy, which I think is a good thing for a lot of people because the good thing it does too is improve the visibility of transfer points at the busiest hubs. You can clearly see
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Yeah, Vance is being very confident that a deal will be reached before Saturday's ban enforcement deadline. I mean, literally. Coming up. Yeah, it is coming up. But literally yesterday he said in an interview with Fox that it'll come out before the deadline. So it looks like he's saying that something is about to come together.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Now, I do think maybe that talking point from Vance is the fact that they will have a bid lined up with that big PE conglomerate, not Mr. Beast, unfortunately, or fortunately, whatever your perspective is. But I don't know if that bid will actually be accepted. That's just another case.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
So I do think maybe the most likely thing is somehow the can will get kicked down the road once again because this is just such a complex negotiation for a very valuable asset in this geopolitical trade war.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Yeah, I think you said it well. The real power of Microsoft has just been ubiquity. You cannot... do knowledge work in the modern era without bumping into some product that Microsoft created. And it's also been able to find a way to reinvent itself throughout various tech cycles. It's basically actually created tech cycles. Its first act was probably Windows.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Its second act was Office and then this dominance of the desktop. And then its third has been cloud infrastructure and AI. So it's just very much a chameleon that has adapted to the new ways we work and has become just this absolute juggernaut that at one point became the most valuable company in the world. While also, I will say it's had more impact on culture than maybe we give it credit for.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
All right. Union Square's got a lot of stuff going through it. So this is where I have to make my transfer. So I do think that this is not a new debate. I mean, you talked about the 72 map that changed over in 79. So we've been having this geographic versus visually representative debate for a long time now. And now we're swinging back towards, you know, visually representative. And it looks cool.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
I know Apple is like the cool tech company that everyone wants an iPhone, but think about what Microsoft has done Gaming, it's got Xbox, Halo, Gears of War, some of the biggest franchise in history. The memes you can't overlook either. I mean, everyone knows Clippy, even if you never really interacted with Clippy. Word art just has this second life on the internet as well.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And then also, shout out to Encarta, which it invented. It was basically Wikipedia before there was Wikipedia. So there's just, you cannot... talk about the tech or really even the modern world without talking about Microsoft.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Oh, yes, that is iconic too. Yes, I forgot about that. But honestly, a pretty solid top five list, but they did my boy Clippy a little dirty right there. I think he's top five material. If you're looking for a way to kill time and bond with your 12-year-old nephew this weekend, maybe we suggest heading to see the Minecraft movie this weekend.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, it's hitting theaters today as the best-selling video game of all time looks to see if it can translate that success to the big screen. Minecraft is massive. 140 million monthly players, over $3 billion in lifetime revenue, 1 trillion YouTube views of its content.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Just by virtue of its subject matter, the Minecraft movie is shaping up to be one of the biggest box office swings in gaming-to-film history. It has all the raw ingredients to be a billion-dollar franchise. A global fan base that spans generations, marketing firepower from a big studio, and some beloved IP has usually been a recipe for success if you look across this genre.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
The most recent Sonic the Hedgehog movie pulled in $500 million running a similar playbook, while the Super Mario Bros. movie grossed over $1.36 billion worldwide, making it the most successful video game adaptation of all time. Now, will this movie be good? Who knows? Rolling Stones described it as exactly what you think it will be and less.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
That's that's my main baseline. It looks cool. Now a word from our sponsor, Tax Act. Neil, I have a confession to make.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
It's got Jack Black and is directed by the dude who made Napoleon Dynamite. So it's at least gonna be weird, that's for sure. But weird might just be the ticket to the next billion dollar movie game app, video game adaptation, Neil.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Neil, I would never do such a thing. No, my confession is I haven't started my taxes yet.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And expectations for it have slowly risen. Three weeks ago, box office projections were sitting at around $58 million. Those slowly creeped up to $60 million. Now they're sitting at about $75 million conservatively. So there's clearly been some indicators in previews that it's going to get off to a hot start.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
But also, maybe people are talking crazy forecasts right now because it's been a pretty long time since the movie industry has had a hit. I mean, only one weekend to date in 2025.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
has exceeded $100 million across all titles and that was when Marvel's latest Hulk abomination movie came out and so maybe some of this is manifestation on the movie industry's part that we're like, finally we got some reliable IP that we think can generate a big hit.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
So we'll see if it gets out of the gate pretty fast, but then that lack of narrative structure might lead it to fizzle or maybe the fan service that it provides will bring in this global audience. So I can see it going a lot of different directions. One thing is for sure is Jack Black has his weirdness factor turned up to 11.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Everything I've read and everything I've seen, he's going hard in this movie.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
I don't know. Divine intervention?
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
But I always procrastinate. It's my thing.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Right. The damage was immediate and it was widespread. Over 80% of the companies in the S&P 500 were were in the red as of 10.20 a.m. in the morning. And then over 80% finished the day in the red as well. And the hardest hit companies were those that rely on manufacturing abroad. So think about your Apples, your Nikes of the world.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Retailers, too, that source a lot of their products from abroad also took a hit. Target was down over 10%. Dollar Tree was also down double digits. Big Tech was also feeling the pinch a lot. The Magnificent Seven saved more than $1 trillion off of their market cap. And Apple had its worst day in over half a decade.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
So those were just some of the biggest names and why you saw such a deeply red day is that from the very top of the tech world all the way down to Dollar Tree and the retail world, there was a lot of people feeling the pinch here.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Yeah. Apple has some very tough choices to make now because it already is one of the more expensive phones and more of the expensive products on the market. So they can't necessarily raise prices. I mean, maybe they can, they're Apple, but, or they'll just have to eat the profits. That's what a lot of companies are kind of facing right now.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Then everyone is lining up to buy TikTok, but can a deal get done before the app has to go dark in the U.S.? It's Friday, April 4th. Let's ride.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
It is fascinating though, because big tech, even though we kind of lump them together, like Apple's business model is very different from Amazon's, which is very different from Amedda's. And yet we saw both of those companies also take a major hit. Amedda is actually exposed because, remember, we've talked about how much Chinese e-commerce retailers spend money on their platform.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Xi'an, Taimu just dump billions of dollars into Amedda advertising. And if they start to pull back due to these tariffs, then it hurts Amedda as well. So you start to see these effects kind of start Even if Meta doesn't manufacture anything, I mean, I guess they manufacture Ray-Ban glasses and headsets at this point, but they're mostly an advertising company.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
But that is another reason how these tariffs affect even companies that aren't manufacturing direct goods in those countries.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
And then finally, one blip of green in that sea of red yesterday where some stocks did go up. Consumer staples was a big one because even that's the classic go-to protection in times of downturn. You still need to buy goods like toilet paper, food, etc. Then utility healthcare sectors also didn't fall as hard as the rest. Also, companies that make American-made products rose pretty well.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Some automakers actually weathered the storm quite well. Ford was a survivor, if you want to call it. They said yesterday that they're going to lower some prices on its vehicles to match the same level it charges employees to try to capitalize on this surge of Buy America. So there were a few companies there that were green, even though most of the market was red.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
The other angle of this post-tariff shockwave that is reverberating through the economy is that a lot of things are on their way to becoming more expensive. According to the Yale Budget Lab, this round of tariffs could bump up fresh produce prices by 4% and overall food costs by nearly 3%. That means you can expect some sticker shock on your favorite foods and drinks.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
To name a few, coffee in the U.S. is almost entirely imported with 99% grown outside U.S. borders. Same with shrimp, where over 90% comes from just four countries now facing new duties of up to 46%. Chocolate and vanilla, same story. Even a cheat day McDonald's burger could get more expensive thanks to a 10% tariff on Australian beef, which is blended with American cuts to create their patties.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Outside of the grocery aisle, tech is another industry that not only had a rough day in the market, but it's also likely to see higher prices. China and Vietnam supplied the vast majority of laptops and tablets, nearly $47 billion worth last year, with new tariffs of up to 50%. Price hikes are likely to follow. And then finally, everyday things like shoes are also staring down higher input costs.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
China and Vietnam account for nearly 70% of shoes sold in the U.S., and tariffs of 54% and 46% are going to hurt. So, Neil, those are some of the categories where economists are forecasting the tariffs to impact.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
What you're seeing right now is sort of a jockeying period amongst world leaders where they, one, try to figure out if this is a jumping off point for negotiations with the United States or if it is something that is here to stay. That being said, you said it touched every corner of the earth, including some truly random places. And I just want to highlight some of those.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
One of those are the Heard Island and McDonald Islands. They are in external Australian territory. They face what Trump is calling a reciprocal tariff of 10%, even though the islands had zero trade with the U.S. last year. And the reason why they had zero trade with the U.S. last year is that they have no human population.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
They are home to only a large population of marine birds and mammals, including seals, albatrosses, and penguins. So that was kind of held up as a meme yesterday of like, we are literally tariffing every corner of the earth, even those corners that don't have humans and just have penguins.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Have you heard what's happening in Ohio lately? The list is long, folks. The economic development corporation Jobs Ohio is making it insanely easy and appealing for businesses to lay down roots in the Buckeye State.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Yeah, you can really see their work in the accolades Ohio's received lately. CNBC ranked it at number seven in its list of top states for doing business and number two for the cost of doing business.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
I think it's very, very understandable, which is the main point here. Because think about a transit map. It has to be available to be seen by people with different levels of vision. It has to be seen by people who have different levels of understanding of what New York City is. It's not just locals taking it. So there's a lot of things to kind of take into account.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
The world's best get better in Ohio. Learn why companies like Andruil, Honda, and Intel are moving to Ohio. Head to JobsOhio.com slash WhyOhio. That's JobsOhio.com slash W-H-Y-Ohio. Taking your business international can feel like sailing through a sea of red tape, regulations, and unpredictability. Is attracting global business worth the global hassle?
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
Wise offers 24-7 live support and transaction notifications so you can track your payments in real time. With full visibility of your finances, you can stay in control. And with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs, you'll be able to save as you scale your business globally.
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What Goods Will Be Impacted By Tariffs & Amazon Buying TikTok?
To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's W-I-S-E dot com slash business. In some non-tariff news, TikTok's clock is getting mighty close to midnight. The April 5th deadline for ByteDance, the platform's Chinese parent company, to sell its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban is less than a day away.