Toby Howell
Appearances
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
I do not accept the premise, but yes, they've done an incredible job of re-engineering classic styles with performance fabrics. Because you're so sweaty. Because I appreciate looking my best. As we all know, when you look your best, you perform your best.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
They've also got breathable wool blazers and high stretch pants that are ideal for work, the weekend, and really anywhere else.
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Enough. Head to mizzenandmain.com to grab your new favorite dress shirt and get 20% off your first purchase with code brew20. That's mizzenandmain.com and code brew20. You might have to give up on your dream of buying a beachfront mansion in Malta and getting EU citizenship in the process.
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Yesterday, Europe's highest court struck down the country's golden passport program, a landmark ruling that highlights the backlash to these cash for citizenship programs, even as the US pursues its own. In its ruling, the EU Court of Justice said that Malta's golden passports, quote, essentially amounts to rendering the acquisition of nationality a mere commercial transaction.
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The European Commission celebrated the ruling and chimed in, European citizenship is not for sale. In response, Malta's government did not put up a fight, saying, OK, if you say so, we'll comply. Malta, a small archipelago of islands between Sicily and North Africa, was one of the last remaining European countries to have a so-called golden passport program. How it worked was this.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
You make a one-off investment of at least 600,000 euros, buy or rent property, live in the country for three years, and bam, you get a Maltese passport. But it's not just a Maltese passport. Because Malta is in the EU, it means you can travel freely among EU countries.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
which A, made it ultra attractive for Middle Eastern and Russian tycoons, and B, also made a target of the EU, which says it's abused by money launderers and other criminals. But while golden passports are under attack in Europe, they now exist in the United States.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
The Trump administration is selling an ultra expensive gold card to wealthy foreigners, giving them a path to citizenship in exchange for an investment of $5 million.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
It's deep in the throes of YouTube, but it was a great time. I just really want to go back. So if there are any Jeopardy producers listening, get me on that show. I can get revenge.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
you are kind of seeing this distancing over in the in europe and the eu but then this leaning in very hard in the united states another country that's leaning in is new zealand they've relaxed their requirements even as europe has battened the hatches they've relaxed their requirements because their economy is stagnating and they want uh more wealthy foreigners to come to new zealand so you saw this very much during the pandemic when everyone's like i need to get outside how about a nice landscape and new zealand was like hey we have all of that so they
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They loosened some of their rules around golden passports, and they want you to come there. And another area of the world where they heavily lean in to this concept of golden visas and golden passports is the Caribbean. In certain countries there, like St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, golden passports make up more than half of revenue for these small island nations.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Europe has been putting pressure on them. in order to jack up the investment requirements or tighten their restrictions because some of them allow for visa fee travel to the UK and the EU. So they're saying, you guys are becoming now a haven for criminals and then they can travel to us. So we want you to tighten the screws a little bit.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Let's bring to the finish with some final headlines. U.S. automakers are breathing a small sigh of relief after the Trump administration said it would soften some tariffs for them.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Car manufacturers will still have to pay 25% tariffs on all cars they import into the United States, but they won't have to fork over for other tariffs stacked on top of those, such as an additional 25% for steel and aluminum or the tariffs on Canada and Mexico based on the fentanyl trade.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Trump said it was a little bit of help to the companies to give them some breathing room to open up more manufacturing plants in the United States. And one by one, Detroit automakers issued statements praising the rollback, with Ford saying it welcomes and appreciates these decisions by President Trump.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Okay, let's do a little look ahead. Later this morning at 8.30 a.m. Eastern, the gross domestic product number for Q1 will be released, providing the most comprehensive report card for the U.S. economy for the first three months of the year. And this big report comes at a time when Americans are feeling historically crummy about the economy, like
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
on par with some of the worst periods in recent economic history. Yesterday, a report showed that consumer confidence fell for the fifth straight month, while expectations for the future dropped to a 13-year low.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
There is nothing better than a good morning routine.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
The conference board, which conducts the survey, wrote that notably, the share of consumers expecting fewer jobs in the next six months was nearly as high as in April 2009 in the middle of the Great Recession. Toby, people say they're really down on the economy, but the numbers that we've seen the past few weeks, the hard data, show that things are mostly healthy as of now.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
All eyes on this GDP report for more clarity.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
But you know what makes a good morning routine even better? Plan It Out. It's so tasty, smooth, and creamy. It makes my 4.30 a.m. cup of coffee even better.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
I mean, people love to hate on these ads. They've been memed so many times over the years for being sort of over the top and preachy. So there you go. Even more ammo. The anti-piracy people likely pirated the font. It's poetic.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
First of all, Shaquille O'Neal's son is named Shaquille O'Neal, which I think at that point you just keep it Shaquille and slap a junior on. But you're right. This is pretty much all about NIL and the professionalization of these athletic departments at universities. They need to fundraise and they can say, hey, we got Shaq here. Want to throw it? Want to write us a check?
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
You know, that goes a long way. Same with Steph Curry. Same with Trey Young and all these other guys. all these other players and former players hopping on to athletic programs. Fun fact about Sacramento State, they are called the Hornets and they play at the Nest, which is one of the oldest facilities in all of Division One teams built in 1955. So we got to catch a game there.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Well, changing up your morning ritual. I always do the same thing.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
I guess the Shaq marketing worked well on me.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. You're almost over the hump. If you've got any questions or feedback on the show, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Who is hair and makeup? Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Meta puts a social media spin on its AI chatbot, but will people like it?
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
No, I mean, first of all, the details of this are extremely murky. We have kind of no idea what happened here. We know there was a call between President Trump and Jeff Bezos where Trump expressed his displeasure at what was going on. And the subtext of this is that Trump and Bezos have become very chummy in an interview with The Atlantic released this week. Trump said about Bezos.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
He's 100 percent. He's been great. He was terrific. And in Trump won the first term. These two were very much at odds. So there is now a direct line between Trump and Bezos. We don't know whether Bezos called up Amazon and said, guys, you cannot do this. I just got a call from the president. Whatever you were thinking, don't do it.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Or whether what Amazon was saying was true was that they were never doing this in the first place. Either way, it speaks to the heart of what's going on for many retailers right now. They are going to face higher prices because there are 145 percent tariffs on China. They need to make a decision. Not only are they going to determine whether to eat the costs or not.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
They have to figure out how to display if they do charge higher prices. They have to figure out how to display that for their customers, how to market it for their customers. Do they just do it subtly by just adding, you know, adding the cost and not even broadcasting that? Or do they say these are an import charge or do they say this is a Trump tariff fee? There's a lot of options available.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
That's the talk of the retail world right now.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
No. So Amazon said it was considering doing this for its Amazon haul purchases. Amazon haul is this new storefront that it opened to compete with Taimou and Shein. And this would maybe make sense and go in line with what the rest of the industry is doing, because Taimou, which is this fast fashion company that imports very small packages from China straight to your doorstep.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Did raise prices, and now it broadcasts that to consumers by putting a 145% line item charge that says Timu import charges. So it calls this import charges. It doesn't say anything about Trump. It doesn't say anything about tariffs. But that is sort of what the industry in fast fashion is doing, and that's what Amazon was reportedly considering.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Good morning, everyone. Toby, I am hyped. The biggest competition of the year kicks off tonight, Jeopardy Masters. The game show is bringing back its top-ranked players to compete in a tournament for a $500,000 prize. Everything about this is going to be supersized. Nine hour-long episodes consisting of two games each with the hardest questions, well, answers, you could think of.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Meta says it's launching a standalone AI app that will go toe-to-toe with ChatGPT, and it's hoping that tossing a little special social media sauce on top will help it stand out. The app, announced yesterday, will run on Meta's Llama AI model and come with all the fixings you expect out of an AI app in 2025.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
You can type questions to it, talk to it, generate images, and receive real-time web results. Previously, Meta's AI had been sprinkled across its apps like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Now it's growing up and moving into a house all by itself. But there is a twist.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
The most interesting and differentiated part of this app is the Discover feed, where you can post your interactions with the AI and see how others are using it as well.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
meta gave an example of someone asking the chatbot to describe them in three emojis which they shared with their friends the company didn't show the part where the friends pretended like they cared and replied lol either way what meta is doing here represents the tightest integration yet between social media and ai but expect to see more of this thinking from companies like openai and elon musk's x meta thinks it can win this contest over those two companies because
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
It knows so much about you already from the data you've already shared with Instagram and its other apps, making its AI more personalized and responsive to your needs. Toby, this AI sharing tool is sure to be divisive.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
People do already share their prompts and responses with ChatGPT and other chatbots on social media. Do you find that engaging? Is that something you've ever thought about?
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Jeopardy has done a great job of turning its all-star contestants into household names.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Yeah, Shopify CEO Toby Luck earlier this year, I would say, broke the dam open for CEOs saying you better come with AI skills or you're just not going to work at this company. We are going to be
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
an ai first company he wrote in this viral memo that ai use is now a fundamental expectation of everyone at shopify and he said if your team doesn't prove that you can't do what you want your team is coming to me asking for more head count but if you can use ai to do that particular thing then you know i won't give you more head count so you need to prove that to me and it seems like what duolingo's ceo was doing was blatantly or ripping off shopify uh ceo memo
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
doing exactly what Toby Lucka laid out and Uber and Klarna. There's all these tech companies now saying the baseline now for you to come work for us is that you have these AI skills. So if you are listening to this, thinking about working at any of these tech companies, you know, I would certainly buttress your AI skills right now.
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Meta Wants to Take On ChatGPT & Duolingo Replaces Workers With AI?
Picture this. You're creating a new software product for your biz, but need to get smart about all the new cloud tools and tech first. Learn how to quickly move your software product ideas from roadmap to reality with the AWS for Software Companies podcast.
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I don't know about legend, but yeah, in 2001, when I was 10 years old, I was on Kids Jeopardy, got to meet Alex Trebek. I said my favorite class in school was recess. which it still is. The cool kid. The cool kid. And we had a little buzzer trouble in Single Jeopardy, but we turned it around. I'm not going to tell anybody how it turned out. You'll just have to watch.
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Each episode brings AWS and product leaders together in a roundtable discussion to chat through what you need to know to get to market faster and continuously optimize your product.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
It's definitely coming for Amazon's neck here. Hunter, the founder of bookshop.org, blames Amazon for the fact that e-books are not more popular. He goes all the way back to kind of the advent of e-books more than a decade ago. Remember, publishers were very scared that the internet revolution would just completely break publishing as we know it. They looked at the music industry and say,
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
look at what happened there. We don't want that to happen here. We don't want our books to start getting pirated left and right. And so Amazon came and soothed their fears and they said, hey, we will keep your books safe from privacy. But it also locked these publishers into deals that were a little more advantageous to Amazon, less advantageous to the publishers.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
And Hunter says that that left the e-book industry to kind of wallow away at around 20% of the overall book market. But now... He's saying that, wait a second, e-books are one of the most level playing fields we can actually compete with Amazon on because remember publishers do require consistent prices across stores. So Amazon can't go and undercut on price.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Also, there's no logistics to delivering an e-book. There is no, you know, Amazon can't have faster shipping times. You're just downloading a file. So he does think that of all the playing fields you could possibly compete with Amazon on, e-books is the most level.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
This reminds me too of the story of the rise of Barnes & Noble recently. Remember, Barnes & Noble has been having a great last few years because they started kind of copying indie bookstores. They started letting store managers recommend books and make it feel more like a neighborhood bookstore. This is the same thing. Bookshop.org wants to elevate these indie bookshops.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
If you go to an indie bookshop's page, you will see, even though you're buying an e-book, their recommendations, their staff picks, and just make the whole online buying experience more reminiscent of going to one of those indie bookshops.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
So I do think we're seeing a rising tide of support for these places that used to be kind of centers of communities, got a little eaten up by Amazon, but are now making a comeback.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
I was in Paris a few years ago and just never did the Louvre because it is a zoo. I mean, it is just insane how long the lines are. And we're like, do we really want to see the Mona Lisa over the backs of a clamoring crowd? They say that the current design is this very large room that is very loud.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Oh, so it was really a concentrated sell-off. Neil, you know what? You're always on it. Where do you even come up with all these facts?
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
It's not a good experience, right? Yeah. Yeah. And they're saying, well, yeah, I guess maybe if you really like art, it's a good experience. But they're also saying the museum's curators say it causes all the other paintings from these famous Venetian painters to go unnoticed as well. So just giving the Mona Lisa her own room, it seems like a logical conclusion.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
What is tough, though, is that they need to accommodate more visitors because when the museum underwent its last renovation in the 1980s, it was designed to receive 4 million annual visitors. Now that's up to 8 million. So overcrowding is just an issue that is tough to deal with, but they think that maybe this new kind of renovation will help alleviate some of those pains.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
The spice maker McCormick is back with its flavor of the year declaration, and it's part sweet, part spicy. After crowning tamarind as the flavor of the year in 2024, McCormick has given the 2025 title to Aji Amarillo, which comes from a yellow-orange chili pepper with some fruity tropical notes commonly used in Peru. The pepper isn't going to set your hair on fire.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
It comes in at 30,000 to 50,000 on the Scoville scale, which corresponds to moderate heat thanks to those fruity hints. But McCormick thinks it's about to set restaurants on fire, anticipating 59% menu growth over the next four years. Neil never tried it, never even heard of it. but I'm intrigued.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Oh, so I was giving you too much credit. You derive your power from perusing Yahoo Finance. Hey, it's right there for you to access too.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
We were trying to just come up with dishes we've had with tamarind even in the last year or so. So maybe it whiffed on 2024, but I am, I also encourage you guys to go and look this up because it is this very vibrant yellow color. So I do think that McCormick also said that you can add it to the glass of a margarita rim of glass.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
So you might be seeing it, not just seasoning foods, but as just accents to, you know, drinks and fun dishes like that.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
One person who certainly does not want him nominated is Caroline Kennedy, RFK's cousin. She urged the Senate in a letter to reject the nomination of her cousin. She called him a predator who is addicted to power.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
If you want to up your perusing game to Neil levels, head to yahoofinance.com. On Monday, the Trump administration directed all federal agencies to pause hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and loans, creating deep uncertainty among those who rely on federal funding. But yesterday evening, a federal judge played an Uno reverse card and temporarily froze Trump's freeze until February 3rd.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Yeah, the goal here, if you are Jerome Powell, is to not make any news at all. Remember, the Fed set the stock market spiraling back in December after it said we're going to take a little bit more cautious approach to interest rates going forward. So this time, he is most likely leaving rates untouched, and he hopes to leave headlines untouched as well.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Or it's just NFL red zone happening right in front of our faces. Like there are going to be goals galore. I think that it's been very tough on the players to have this expanded Champions League format. It's more games that they're playing, but man, hasn't been good for the fans.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
I want you to share the podcast with someone the Chinese zodiac says you are not compatible with. I just want to prove that opposites can coexist and even thrive. So go out there, get me some successful data points by recommending MBD to your supposed opposite.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
The administration spent most of yesterday clarifying their memo, saying it wasn't a blanket pause and it wouldn't affect programs offering direct payments to individuals like Social Security or Medicare.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
The goal of the pause was to take stock and make sure programs align with the president's priorities and also rein in government spending on grant programs and federal assistance, which hit $3 trillion last fiscal year. That is nearly half of the $7 trillion the government is expected to spend in fiscal year 2025. The pause also likely sets up a constitutional fight over spending powers.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
The executive branch is only allowed to spend money allocated by Congress and signed by the president. And many see Trump's order as an unconstitutional attack on Congress's power of the purse. Already states are pushing back. A coalition of attorneys generals filed a suit yesterday to block the order.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
So Neil, not only does this order affect a lot of cash and a lot of people, but it will no doubt also find its way to the courts.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
And then let's talk about some of the legal issues that this might face. So there was this law passed back in 1974 that was aimed to rein in what at the time Congress saw as abuses of power by Richard Nixon when he was in office. So that law requires the executive branch to spend money that is only allocated by Congress.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
And so now a lot of people are contending that all the money in these programs that were approved by President Biden cannot be, you know, now blocked without an act of Congress. They say that that would be unconstitutional. You cannot usurp the power, the legislative branch's power to allocate funds.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Then the Trump administration's vague directive to halt $3 trillion in federal funding has hit a bit of a roadblock. It's Wednesday, January 29th. Let's ride.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
So that is the main sort of constitutional fight that we could see filtering down through the court system.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
And if you are an eagle-eared listener, you might have remembered that subject line because it resembles the same exact one that Elon Musk sent to Twitter employees back in 2022, giving them a similar ultimatum. So clearly... He and Trump are running the exact same playbook here to try to, you know, purge some employees from the federal government as well.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
Right. It's decision-making on maps is very important. It's also pretty shrouded in secrecy. These are decisions that are made within Google themselves. They do try to listen to history and listen to local laws. In the case of the mountain, it is definitely something that Trump has the authority to do. You can rename anything on U.S. federal lands.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
When it comes to the Gulf of Mexico, when it comes to the Gulf of America now, it's a lot more complicated because obviously that body of water borders more than just the U.S. It borders Mexico, borders Cuba, and it's had that name since the 17th century. So none of those other countries are under any obligation to call it the Gulf of America going forward, even though that now Trump and the U.S.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
will recognize it as such.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
I think this is good for the map making business, at least within America's borders, because you got to order new maps for a classroom. So maybe if you're a map maker, you're looking at this as a good thing for business. If you happen to find yourself strolling through the Mojave Desert in California yesterday, you may have heard a big boom above your head.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
No, it wasn't the Costco guys rating a double chocolate chunk cookie. It was the XB-1 prototype plane built by Boom Supersonic. The XB-1 is a smaller scale demonstration version of what will eventually be a larger airliner that Boom wants to turn into a commercially viable supersonic plane.
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Yesterday was its 12th test flight, but the first time it was slated to go full Concorde and break the sound barrier, which it did successfully three times. After takeoff, it climbed to an altitude of 34,000 feet before the pilot Tristan Geppetto-Brandenburg let her loose and hit a top speed of Mach 1.1, about 760 mph.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
The XP-1 now holds the distinction of becoming the first civil aircraft built by a private company to have gone supersonic. Neil, this was but a taste of Boom's long-term vision of transporting up to 80 passengers on supersonic international flights, but what a compelling taste it was.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
there's engineering problems. You have to have a very long nose and you have to have a very high angle of attack when taking off and landing, which if you are a pilot, that interrupts your view of the runway if you have a big old nose in front of you and you're coming in really steeply.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
So the Concorde had dealt with this by having this movable droop nose as it was described, but Boom has had the luxury of having technology advance over the decades since Concorde flew. So now it has this augmented reality system that allows you to see the runway, see in quotation marks, because without all that extra weight that a droop nose brought in.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
So this digital engineering, this rise of digital engineering has allowed some advancements to be made, which is why people are a little bullish on Boom Supersonic.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
It sounds like you're going to pay a lot, but also the grand vision here is if we have faster planes, you technically need less of them because they can do more trips. So maybe in the grand scheme of things, it does end up lowering prices because you just don't need to make as many airplanes because they're going faster. Up next, a feel-good story about indie booksellers.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
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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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
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Morning Brew Daily
Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
I am the year of the ox, Neil, which is unfortunately really bad news for the podcast because apparently, according to the Chinese Zodiac, ox and goat are not compatible at all and should in fact avoid each other wherever possible. So it might be time for me to pack it up and you need to go out and find a pig or a rabbit because apparently that is what you are compatible with. Okay.
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Fed Funding Freeze Causes Chaos & Indie Book Site Takes On Amazon
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.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
From generative AI and cybersecurity to data privacy, product leaders are managing a whole lot of change. On the pod, you'll learn how your fellow product leaders are navigating innovation at their orgs.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
I've been one time. No, it is not lucky and I don't want to talk about it. But I also think we just found a new side hustle, Neil, because casino operators can hire us to go create fake TripAdvisor accounts and drop every synonym we know for luck, lucky, jackpot, etc. in their reviews. So then they can become the luckiest casino in America. That is called making your own luck.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Stream AWS for software companies everywhere you listen to podcasts.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
This makes it easier than ever to manage your money all in one place. You can conveniently sign up for checking and payments in one seamless process and keep your money moving from sale to spend.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Head to www.squareup.com slash debitcard to get started. That's www.squareup.com slash debitcard. Block Inc. is a financial services platform and not an FDIC-insured bank. Square Debit Card is issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from Mastercard. Remember the dubious white powdery substance your meathead friends were ripping in between classes back in high school?
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Well, much like yourself, that powder has had a glow up since those days. And creatine has moved from gym bros shaker bottles into the mainstream. And it's that rise I want to talk about on today's edition of Tobi's Trends. Kreatin ist jetzt einer der am meisten populärsten und weltweit studierten Supplements.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Es ist eine natürliche Substanz in unseren Körpern, die in kleinen Mengen von unserem Blut und Gehirn synthetisiert wird. Du kannst auch einen Gramm oder zwei von deiner Diät nehmen, speziell aus Fleisch oder Seafood. Die Hauptbedürfnisse, die du von der Erhöhung deiner Dosis von Kreatin sehen kannst, sind erhöhte Muskelmasse.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Nicht, weil Kreatin selbst Muskel bildet, sondern weil es dir die Energie und Kraft gibt, stärker zu trainieren und schneller zu überleben. It's also been linked to improved cognition and memory benefits and has been shown to fight off the effects of sleep deprivation, which is of special interest to the whole MBD crew.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Combine all those benefits with a recent meta-analysis of hundreds of studies that found little to no negative side effects. Neal, I got a little tub on my desk at home and at work. Creatine truly is riding a wave right now and has been for the last few years. I
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Ja, die Gehirn lieben definitiv Creatin, laut vielen Studien. Gehirn-Hilfe, Depressionen-Treatment, erhöhte Energie, aber auch der Longevitäts-Movement haben die Creatin über die letzten paar Jahre komplett übernommen, weil, du weißt, Muskeln zu bauen, bevor man alt ist, das Ziel ist, gesundes Alter zu haben, und Creatin hilft damit, aber auch,
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Es hat all diese körperlichen Vorteile, die wir so weit studiert haben. Und ich denke, das ist vielleicht der größte Schritt, den wir gesehen haben. So viel Longevity wie das Feld selbst ist, ist mehr populär, mehr lukrativ geworden. Huberman, Atiyah, Brian Johnson. Creatine hat similarerweise seinen Star-Rise gesehen.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Ich denke, so viele der wichtigen Tendenzen dieser Bewegung sind reflektiert in den Vorteilen, die man in Creatine sieht. Das ist Teil der Grund, weshalb es so hoch gestiegen ist.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Ich meine, ich kann nicht wirklich einen Schwivel bewegen, aber ich habe eine Menge Mackerl auf einem tiefen Meer-Fischen-Trip verpackt. It ain't gonna happen.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Let's dive into how many international students this might affect. It's around 6% of the total US higher education population. That comes out to about 1.1 million students if you look at last US school year. About 25% of those international students did study math or computer science. In one in five opted for engineering.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
So these are highly skilled people taking very difficult classes who, if they stay in America, become citizens, could bring those skills into the workforce. There's also the tuition angle. Obviously, two foreign students typically pay more in tuition, full tuition, which helps universities provide more financial aid to U.S. citizens.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
So the pushback here is that the vetting for these student visas increases. ist bereits ein sehr schwieriges Prozess. Ich meine, du musst durch ihre akademischen Kredite gehen, ihre Finanzen. Du musst sehen, was ihre Beziehungen zu ihrem eigenen Land sind, ob sie in Amerika bleiben werden oder zurück in ihr Land gehen. Also, Social-Media-Verteidigung aufgrund davon.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Leute denken, das ist nur ein unnötiger und zusätzlicher Schritt. Up next, the US shopper felt the first traces of warm spring weather on their faces. It immediately channeled prime Michael Jordan, fully regaining their confidence back.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
US consumer confidence jumped in May by the most in four years, driven by improved economic and labor market outlooks and easing tariff tensions, with expectations for the next six months surging by the most since 2011. Part of that jump might be due to timing. The cutoff for the survey was May 19th, right after the US and China announced
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
agreed to temporarily reduce tariffs on each other's goods and negotiate a trade deal, so people were feeling upbeat. But that optimism was also reflected in the market yesterday, which roared back to life after Trump walked back some of his EU-tariff threats as well. Neil, I haven't seen a turnaround in confidence like this since I got my braces off.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
HBO's upcoming Harry Potter TV series announced their casting of the iconic Hogwarts Trio yesterday, with Arabella Stanton taking on the role of Hermione and Alistair Stout as the flaming ginger Ron.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
The three landed their parts after an open casting call that drew over 30,000 auditions and will now join a star-studded group that includes John Lithgow as Dumbledore and Janet Metier as Professor McGonagall, with J.K. Rowling serving as executive producer. Neil, Filming is set to begin this summer with a show promising to be a faithful adaptation of the seven books.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Judging from the looks of the youths, does it seem faithful so far?
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
That's what LinkedIn Ads is built for, avoiding ad waste. LinkedIn has a network of over a billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company, role, seniority, revenue. Vielen Dank. Elon Musk hat gestern auf X veröffentlicht, dass er 24-7 am Arbeiten ist und super konzentriert ist auf seine Firmen.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Yeah, speaking of Broadway, that's where Arabella came from, the child who's playing Hermione. She's been crushing it as Matilda on Broadway. A West End in London. Yeah, sorry, not in Broadway, in London. But then also Harry finally has green eyes, which has been the one bone to pick with Daniel Radcliffe. Obviously he was an incredible Harry Potter, but he's had blue eyes.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
And green eyes is kind of a big plot point to the whole Harry Potter arc. So finally they found a Harry with green eyes. Red Hair, check, got that. Like, that's pretty much the main thing you have to visibly nail. And this kid has flaming ginger locks, so I think they did well on all three of them.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
We also did a story about how everyone in Japan will be called Saito by 2531 unless married couples are permitted to change their surname. So there is this naming kind of controversy in Japanese culture where they don't really necessarily want you to take any risk. They don't necessarily want to stray too far from tradition.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
And you see the downstream effects of that is the fact that the entire population is going to converge on one surname if you don't allow a little bit more leeway here. Und jetzt kratzen sie auch auf eure ersten Namen. Also ein schwieriger Zeitpunkt, um ein bisschen kreative Sparke zu haben, wenn du ein Kind in Japan nennen würdest.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Das super konzentrierte Aufmerksamkeitsspan wurde gestern gegen Space gewechselt, als er seinen CEO von SpaceX hat, um den Start seines 400-Foot-Starship-Rockets auf seinem neunten Test-Fight zu übersehen.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Starship did make it much further into its flight path than two prior test flights, who were destroyed just minutes after takeoff, but didn't quite achieve its goal of a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. It also whiffed on a secondary mission of deploying eight dummy satellites in a test designed to mimic the process of distributing satellites
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
upgraded Starlink Internet satellites the rocket will carry when operational. So another Rorschach test of a test flight, Neil. Was it successful because it went further than others or a failure because Starship met a fiery demise?
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Yeah, and you mentioned the moon, but Mars is becoming more and more of a priority for NASA. Obviously, it's always been a priority for Elon. That's the founding ethos of SpaceX to make humanity a multi-planetary species. But NASA is considering launching rockets to Mars by next year. That is a major shift because, yes, this moon landing program has been...
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Das ist technisch die Priorität, die Starship gegründet hat. Aber Elon will nicht mehr zurück auf die Erde gehen. Er will auf die Erde gehen und auf Mars. Aber das passiert nicht, wenn man nicht auf die Erde geht. Aber ja, wir gehen nicht nur... Let's go back to Earth a little bit because Elon did post this tweet earlier in the week saying like, hey, I am back to my companies.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
I'm no longer as Doge-obsessed as I once was. And we did get a lot of Elon News, you know, focus on Earth yesterday. Tesla-Stock fühlte sich nach der Proklamierung aufgeregt und stieg etwa um 7% gestern. Das hat den Schmerz der europäischen Sales-Figuren geholfen, die einen 50%-Drohung in den Sales auf dem europäischen Kontinent in April gezeigt haben. Das sind einfach furchtbare Zahlen.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Der Stock ging aber hoch, weil Elon wieder auf der Werkstatt schläft. And then for every bit of bad news, there is an equal and opposite bit of good news. It seems like his Neuralink startup raised a fresh round of funding, $600 million at a $9 billion valuation. That's up from $3.5 billion valuation two years ago. So a lot going on in Elon land.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Then Elon Musk's Starship reached new heights and also new lows in a launch last night. It's Wednesday, May 28th. Let's ride.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
It's just such a bummer. And that sentiment was reflected on social media yesterday. I saw people saying that, hey, I just took a trip with my family to Florida. I would have paid $200 more just to get my bags on board under this new policy. But the sirens call of baggage fees was just too much for Southwest to ignore. The US Airlines made over $7 billion from baggage fees last year.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
That is a crazy amount of money. You look at maybe some of its peers, Spirit, Frontier, I don't know if Southwest would actually consider itself peers with that, but kind of not the big three airlines. Spirit made $774 million in baggage fees. Frontier made $861 million. The big three each made over a billion dollars in airline. And Southwest brought in $83 million.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Those are just from the people who exceeded the two-bag fly-free policy. So That was just too much money that they thought they were leaving on the table. And now it is a new era in the Southwest.
Morning Brew Daily
SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Der letzte Punkt, über den wir nicht gesprochen haben, ist der Fakt, dass Business-Select- oder High-Loyalty-Status-Mitglieder immer noch diese kostenlosen Taschen bekommen. Das könnte also in das Kreditkarten-Business einsteigen, was für viele Flugzeuge ein großer Geldmacher ist. Delta hat rund 7,5 Billionen Dollar von ihren Kreditkarten gekostet, die sie im Verhandlung mit American Express haben.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
So maybe Southwest is saying, hey, let's beef up our credit card program. More people are going to want to join our rewards, our loyalty, use our credit card in order to get those bags fly free policy. So if you were looking for maybe a more positive spin on this, potentially it could lead to a greater increase of its credit card business.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
Yeah, let's talk about this Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the CPB. It's this non-profit organization created by Congress back in the 60s to distribute federal funding to things like public radio and TV stations across the US. It's not a broadcaster itself, it's just a financial steward that funnels money, appropriates money Vielen Dank.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
CPB produziert kein Content oder läuft keine Stationen selbst. Es ist nur der Funding-Mittelmann. Lass uns ein bisschen darüber sprechen, wann das Geld an die NPR geht. Geht es direkt an die NPR als Ganzes? Nicht wirklich. Viele dieser Geld geht an die lokalen Mitgliedsstationen, wie z.B. WNYC, die dann die NPR-Programmierung kaufen. Also macht es letztendlich den Weg zurück.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
zu NPR, but it really does support kind of that bedrock of member stations around the country and those member station fees comprise 30% of NPR's funding, so it would not be good for the whole public radio news network or PBS to have that hit and have that funding pulled, obviously.
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SpaceX Reaches New Heights & Southwest’s Bag Fee Has a Price
So who are they going to try out this time? I guess Big Bird or bring out Sesame Street from PBS. Those are the big guns these days. Up next, we got Toby's Trends.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
I want to drill into some other parts of this report, though, because this report said that some airlines have these bounty programs that they pay gate agents to... cash incentives to identify customers who are trying to avoid fees for carry-on bags. We've all been there before, where you probably didn't pay for a carry-on bag, but you're trying to sneak it by, and then a gate agent calls you out.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Frontier had a big one where they were giving gate personnel up to $10 for each bag a passenger is forced to check at the gate because they want to reap these extra bag fees. I have been there before, too. I've had a horrible experience where I got nabbed for trying to carry on a tuxedo, and they considered that an extra bag, and I was like, I'm just going to hang it up.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
And so I'm still a little bitter about this, but seeing just how much money these airlines are making off of all these extra fees that they just get you for is definitely something that I think a lot of people can relate to.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
And if you're listening to today's episode while traveling home, may the traffic be light and your overhead bin space be empty. Enjoy the break. But first, a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. One of the most frustrating parts about investing is having an inkling of an idea, but then not really having the tools necessary to act on it.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Yes, I do think that is good. Consider the source here because there was another survey earlier this year commissioned by Slack that talked to a more broad group of people, 17,000 workers across multiple different countries and continents. And they actually found that overall AI adoption was stalling out. Nearly half of workers says they weren't even comfortable admitting they used the technology.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
But then you contrast it with this survey from Google where 93% of Gen Z said that they were using these tools. And it could just be a generational divide that we're looking at here. It does seem like younger people are much more transparent about the tools they are using. I think that has tracked a little bit.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Some of the older people I've talked to, it's like a secret that they want to keep hidden away that they're using this thing, whereas young people are like, yeah, I either use it or I don't use it. So maybe it's generational. Maybe it's something that is just specific to this group of people that Google specifically surveyed.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Right. 52% of that group did say, of Gen Z, said that they frequently discuss their AI tools with colleagues. So again, that is what I'm saying, that they are more transparent about their AI usage.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Yeah, you definitely got to have a couch to crash on if you want to come. But people are still coming to the city. One organization that promotes tourism in New York City said that They had not seen any indications that rising room prices were actually dissuading people from coming to visit.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
They estimated that about 65 million people will visit the city a year, down a little bit from 66 million people that visited in 2019, but still a very healthy number. You look at occupancy rates, too. Across the city, 91% of rooms were occupied in September, so
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
I don't know who these people are coming, but they clearly have some deep pockets because clearly these ultra-high prices, the highest they've ever been, is not dissuading travelers from actually coming to visit the city.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
And then plus, you probably have to pay extra to get your seats together from the airline.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Yeah, I mean, Starbuck, as well as some decisions handed by the Supreme Court this year blocking affirmative action in higher education, have pushed a lot of American corporations, companies like John Deere, Harley-Davidson, Lowe's, Ford's, among others, to move away from, quote, wokeness, as Robbie Starbuck puts it. So Walmart is the latest and the biggest company to do so.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
So, yeah, I do think it is pretty significant. Intel needs a serious side of guac to go along with all the chips it will be making because the government just granted them $7.8 billion to build out its manufacturing operation via the CHIPS Act.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Because it's Intel and Intel has been on the struggle bus recently, the government actually cut its funding to under $8 billion from the original $8.5 billion it had earmarked it for. But still... It's the biggest recipient of money under the CHIPS Act. One thing that might have also led to the funding drop is a $3 billion contract that Intel has been offered to produce chips for the U.S.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
military. But Neil, I kind of feel like Intel just fails upwards these days.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
A new chatbot from a British phone company is here to help you combat those phone scammers blowing up your phone. Dubbed Daisy, the so-called AI grandma works much like your own sweet grandmother you haven't caught up with in a while. The bots maker O2 says that Daisy's mission is to quote,
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Was your friend really early on the monster energy train? He's more of a Celsius guy. Ah, a man of taste. Don't let your next investing hypothesis go to waste. Head to yahoofinance.com today. Donald Trump took aim at three of America's biggest trading partners this week, posting on True Social his plans to impose 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada and
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
talk with fraudsters, and waste as much of their time as possible with human-like rambling to keep them away from real people. Daisy was actually trained on hours of recorded conversations with one of her creator's real-life grandmas, so you know it's accurate. And according to early results, Daisy has kept bad actors on the phone for up to 40 minutes at a time.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Daisy doesn't intercept any calls, but she does have multiple phone numbers out there that O2 has worked to get into circulation as bait for the scammers. And Neil, I just love this story.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
That is actually great to know, but I don't know who is going to be taking Thanksgiving leftovers on the plane. I was traveling last Thanksgiving flying home, and I'm not kidding. The vouchers to get people to skip this flight and go to another one reached over $2,000.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
So maybe if you run into some travel issues, your loved ones might understand if you come bearing $2,000 in flight vouchers as a gift.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
as a retaliation for the flow of drugs and migrants into the US. He's also eyeing a 10% tariff on goods from China, on top of an existing 15% import duty that has been in place since 2018. Those three nations Trump mentioned traded with the US more than the kid who showed up with fruit by the foot at the middle school lunch tables.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
The three North American countries alone exchanged about $1.8 trillion worth of goods. Meanwhile, annual U.S. trade with China is about $600 billion. But which goods and companies are set to be the most affected should these tariffs come down the pipeline?
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
I mean, let's start by just continuing down the list, Neil. Fruits and veggies are also going to be hugely affected as well. A ton of produce that you see in American supermarkets does come in from Mexico. Mexico is the number one exporter of raspberries, tomatoes, strawberries, and obviously avocados into the United States.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Then if you head north, the meat and dairy industry is also going to be affected. Canada is sends tons, actually millions of cows for dairy and beef our way, as well as a bunch of hogs across their southern border. So it really doesn't matter which industry you want to look at.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Since trade is so big between the North American countries as well as China, pretty much everything is going to be affected by these tariffs.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
I think one industry that we do have to drill in on a little bit more is the auto-making industry as well because it is just a huge part of Mexico at this point. A lot of factories that we mentioned before are set up there.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
And if you look at the stock market yesterday, GM, Chrysler, Ford all plunged on the news that Trump was thinking about levying these tariffs because a lot of the auto parts are made in Mexico and have become more expensive with these tariffs. Tesla's stock...
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
weirdly rose yesterday, which is, I don't know, Tesla is a little bit divorced from the wider auto market sometimes, despite the fact that Tesla does have plans to build a gigafactory down there in Mexico. And then even if you go across to European indexes, they fell too because they are another potential prime tariff target.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Trump has said in the past that he wants to kind of normalize trade relations between Europe and the United States, particularly when it comes to European automakers. So this is one industry that is going to be heavily affected by Trump's plan to lever these tariffs.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Then another trade war is brewing after Trump threatened tariffs against Mexico, Canada, and China. It's Wednesday, November 27th. Let's ride. Well, you all made it. It is the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Soak it in because this is the Friday-est feeling Wednesday you'll get all year.
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
It would be a game changer, but let's drill into those two hurdles because they are rather large. This would run Medicare about $25 billion, Medicaid about $11 billion over 10 years. The government officials do say that they don't expect it to increase out-of-pocket premiums, but that is... Definitely at odds with the incoming administration's general plan to cut federal spending.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
So that is one big issue. And then the second issue you mentioned is RFK Jr. He is not a fan of these drugs at all. He instead wants to prioritize access to healthy nutrition rather than doing it through Big Pharma, which he has been a pretty... Yeah, pretty anti-Big Pharma so far. So I do think that those are pretty decent-sized hurdles.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
One thing going in its favor, though, is the fact that this is going to be very popular with a lot of seniors, a lot of people who are covered by Medicare and Medicaid. So maybe Trump just looks at that and says, hey, a lot of people do want this, so maybe we can actually push this through despite the increased costs that it's going to run the government through.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
And honestly, they're going to be fine no matter what. Yes, increased coverage means it will inevitably lead to wider adoption, but also, even if they don't get this coverage, they are charging very high premiums for these drugs, and a lot of people do use them, so they're kind of winning no matter what here. It's just a matter of how much they might win.
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Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Hope you're taking some time off this week to spend with family and you finally get to try out that maple glazed turkey recipe you saw on TikTok.
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Well, Drake is still big mad about losing his rap battle to Kendrick Lamar, so he's taking the second round of their beef to the courtroom. Drake made a court filing this week alleging that Universal Music Group conspired to artificially inflate Kendrick Lamar's summer banger Not Like Us on music streaming services using bots and other tactics. Now, the ironic part about this
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
allegation is that umg is the parent of both kendrick and drake's record labels given their affiliations people have dubbed this spat raps civil war on top of the inflated streaming suit drake's legal team also filed another action against umg alleging defamation for releasing not like us knowing it was falsely accusing him of being a sex offender according to the suit
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
The suit says that UMG's plan was to turn Not Like Us into this viral mega hit and drive consumer hysteria and, of course, massive revenues. So now you have two suits rekindling this mega beef with UMG at the center of all. Neil Drake brought a lawyer to a rap battle.
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Some other specifics of the suit is that UMG had this financial agreement with Apple to have Siri, when users said, play Certified Loverboy, which was the name of Drake's album, it would play Not Like Us instead, because there is a lyric within Not Like Us that does say Certified Loverboy, so...
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
Drake was probably... I want to imagine he was sitting at home and he goes, Siri, play Certified Lover Boy. And it plays not like us. He calls his lawyer up and goes, we need to sue UMG right now because they are playing Kendrick's song instead of my album. But you are right. A lot of it is a little bit...
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
No smoking gun has emerged as of yet, but you might expect that if Drake did feel the need to file this initial suit, then he has something that he's sitting on. Because if not, it's just a pretty bad look in the court of public opinion. Because again, I said he's bringing a lawyer to a rap battle. That is not something that gives you a ton of street cred when you are trying to battle someone.
Morning Brew Daily
Industries React to Trump Tariffs & Drake-Kendrick Beef Goes to Court
So maybe he's got something, maybe he doesn't. But it's clear that he's still not over Not Like Us. Up next, I know it's Wednesday, but we have a special early edition of Neal's Numbers coming up next.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
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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.
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
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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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
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.
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RIP Party City & FAA Gets a Starlink Makeover?
I touched my toes for the first time.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
This is just making me reconsider each other, because we spend so much time with each other hosting this daily podcast. We better rub off on each other in the best ways, Neil. You mentioned social media a little bit in that last answer, and I want to talk about your social media account. Your profile picture is someone, it might be you, looking up at this seemingly infinite ice wall or glacier.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
Is nature one of those things that helps put things into perspective for you? How does nature fit into your philosophy and outlook on life?
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
You have talked to lots of different Fortune 500 companies, Capital One, Cisco, GE, Honda. The list goes on. What do these Fortune 500 companies want to know? What are they looking for from you, the quote-unquote habit guy?
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
Oh, interesting, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
Speaking of last year, last December you posted this thought starter to your newsletter readers. It's one year from now, the habit you were hoping to build during the year didn't stick. What is the most likely reason it failed? Why is predicting the reason a habit failed in the future worth thinking about in the present now?
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
That's our job, too, actually, at Morning Brew. We are synthesizers of information, so definitely preaching to the choir there. All right, I'm sure for our final question of the day, there's someone out there right now who is debating whether to follow through on their newly minted New Year's resolution. Maybe they're deciding whether to go to the gym right now.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
What would you say to them to get them on track to start the year off right?
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
James, thank you so much for joining us. I can't imagine listening to you speak and not wanting to become the absolute best version of yourself possible. So I hope everyone listening at home feels the same. If you want more of James, you can find his book, Atomic Habits, his habit journal, and his newsletter at jamesclear.com or on social at James Clear. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, James.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
Speaking of stuff that is fun for me, I'm going to be selfish here for a second and use you while we have you. I want to get better at golf. Neil does as well, I can tell in his face. But I live in New York City. How would you set up kind of a get better at golf system? What should step one be for us?
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
James, you have no idea how much ammunition you're providing me right now. Listen, James Clear told me I have to go practice golf, Mom. I'm so sorry that I'm home for Christmas and I'm hitting the course. So thank you for all that. That was actually very enlightening as well. Sure.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
Sticking in the sports category, my old soccer coach always used to say, he was British, so this is my British accent, Toby, do you love to win or do you hate to lose? I never had a great answer for it, so I'm turning it over to you. What is a more effective motivator, positive or negative reinforcement?
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
how to actually get yourself to the gym, and whether my old soccer coach's motivation techniques were brilliant or bogus. This was originally recorded last year, but the wisdom in it holds true to this day, and we think you'll get a lot out of the conversation. Enjoy.
Morning Brew Daily
James Clear Explains How to Set Goals and Instill Habits for 2025
An interview with the author of Atomic Habits, James Clear. It's Wednesday, December 25th. Merry Christmas, and let's ride. Hope you all are settling in to open your presents right now. Maybe some MBD swag if you're lucky. We also hope you're enjoying some time with friends and family. And if you are, thanks for carving out a moment of your day to spend with us as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
The right throw blanket can take the same old couch, same old room, and upgrade it big time.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Those headlines are maybe a little overblown because when you put the amount into perspective, it's not a lot. Two tons of rice that is currently coming in from South Korea, not even close to the 142,000 tons that they released from the stockpile. But still, it is just showing that this is a moment of crisis for Japan right now because they are very, very particular about their rice.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Although I do just want to give a one shout out to American rice, because this is just one data point, but the guardian talked to a restaurant owner who has said, listen, Japanese rice is too expensive for me. I switched to California rice to import. And they talked to some diners that frequent in the restaurant. And they were like, honestly, no qualms about eating it.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Then Elon Musk is promising to spend less time on Doge and more time on Tesla because, boy, does it need it. It's Wednesday, April 23rd. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Prices have gone up, so I'm looking for cheaper ones. And this was actually pretty good, so maybe don't knock it until you try it, especially when it comes to California-made rice.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
It's creamy, rich, smooth as can be, like your morning got wrapped in a nice warm hug.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Yeah, we did see a little bit of a greener Monday, but also there are still some figures coming in, especially from the International Monetary Fund, saying that, hey, we do think this trade war is going to weigh on the global forecast, both for the U.S. and the entire world. It called for its U.S. growth outlook to drop – to only be 1.8% in 2025.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
That's down 0.9 percentage points from its January forecast. And then meanwhile, cut its global forecast down by 0.5 percentage points as well. So it's not calling for a recession in the US. It's not calling for anything crazy, but it is downgrading those forecasts. And then just one final, I feel like I'm being Debbie Downer here, but
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Bessette did express optimism that a deal with China would be reached, but also went on to clarify that there were no current diplomatic negotiations going on between the two countries to end the trade war. So even though we got a little bit of that optimism, it's nothing super concrete at this point.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Bill Owens, the executive producer of CBS's News 60 Minutes, resigned yesterday, citing a loss of journalistic independence in the recent month. Owens stated in a memo that he could no longer make independent decisions in the best interest of the show and its audience.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
The backstory here is that the network is currently in the middle of a $20 billion lawsuit filed by President Trump against CBS's parent company, alleging deceptive editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Neil Owens is just the third person to lead 60 Minutes in its 57-year history, so this was not a spur-of-the-moment decision, but clearly he felt that this was the right thing to do for 60 Minutes and its audience.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit PlanetOat.com for more. Tesla reported earnings yesterday, and it looks like Elon Musk's absence is becoming more of an issue than Ferris Bueller on his day off. The struggling EV maker did nothing to dispel fears that it's facing some serious headwinds.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
I miss the good old days too. Although I think I'm mooching off of your brother's cat right now. So this is definitely going to come and hurt me. But this is the playbook, as you mentioned. Get a lot of people using the streaming platform. Get them hooked on stuff like The Last of Us. And then boom, here comes the crackdown. It did work wonders for Netflix.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And I think that they led the charge with it. And so it's even easier for other streamers to come along and do the same thing like we have seen. So Max gets all of the benefits without getting kind of the same vitriol that Netflix originally did when it rolled out this plan. So definitely a win for Max.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Finally, you know that judgy friend who never really sees popular movies but always has something to say about them anyways? Well, that's basically how the Academy has been handing out Oscars. Anonymous voters have admitted to not watching certain nominees over the years, with some openly skipping movies with runtime or genres they don't like, which could explain some snubs or 10.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So the Academy finally implemented a new rule yesterday requiring voters to actually watch all the nominated films in a category before casting a ballot. If you want to scream, wait, they weren't doing that already, you have every right to do so now. One other aspect of this is enforcement.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Can't exactly force a voter's eyelids open to watch Dune II like they're in a clockwork orange, but the Academy thought of this and will monitor viewing activity through its members-only Academy screening room streaming platform, according to Variety. For films viewed outside the platform, You have to submit a form indicating when and where you watched.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Neil, I for one think they should have to take a little test too.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And then finally, this is slightly rated, but just since everyone's been talking about Conclave recently, I remember during this last Oscar cycle, a lot of people kind of anonymously quoted themselves as saying, I didn't give Ralph Fiennes the lead in Conclave in Oscar because he's already won one for his role in Schindler's List. So they didn't vote for him.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Even though he never won for Schindler's List, people just assumed that. And so... Those headlines combined with the fact that some people weren't watching movies were like, what is the Academy even doing here?
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Global deliveries fell 13% while net income sank 71% as the company contends with falling demand, increased competition, and and its CEO's political side projects. Q1 2025 was the first quarter with under $1 billion in net income for Tesla in four years, and it wasn't even close, coming in at just over $400 million.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Do I want to get takeout on my way home from work? Yes. Does that takeout sometimes make me feel bleh afterwards? Also yes.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
See, I'm more of a four-cheese tortellini and Italian sausage guy. Fills me right up, and I still get to enjoy the sauteed kale and garlicky green beans that come on the side.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
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Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Since Elon Musk started working on Doge in earnest, the company's stock has fallen by about 40%, and shareholders are increasingly getting frustrated by his divided attention. Eight state treasurers, including those from California and Illinois, sent a letter to Tesla's board yesterday, raising concerns about the company's slipping performance and Elon's bifurcated focus.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And it's clear Elon is feeling the pressure. He said yesterday that the time he spends on Doge will drop, quote, significantly in the next month, which is likely the reason the stock rose in after-hours trading. Still, even if Elon was giving Tesla his 100% attention, it's not guaranteed that the company can magically turn things around.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
European deliveries have fallen by double digits per cents in the first two months of the year, and the company's eye-catching Cybertrucks have sold just 50,000 units so far, prompting a quiet reposition of the futuristic vehicle's brand to cater to more of a working man F-150 crowd.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Neil, analysts knew that yesterday's earnings weren't going to paint a rosy picture, but this was a really rough quarter.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Yeah, and if you want to put some numbers to it of the parallels between working on Doge and working on Tesla, Doge's website claims to have cut about $160 billion from the U.S. government, $160 billion in savings. Over that same stretch, Tesla has lost roughly $600 billion in market cap.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So again, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but it kind of just goes to show you the value creation and the value destruction that has been happening due to this divided focus.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And then finally, I just want to talk about the Cybertruck for a little bit because a lot of resources went into developing this hulking futuristic vehicle. And it's looking increasingly like maybe that vehicle is a flop. Sales of the Cybertruck in the first quarter were down about 50%. They sold just over 6,400, which is not a lot considering they have the capacity to produce 31,000 vehicles.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And so internally, there's sort of this rebrand, this repositioning happening where Words like cyberpunk are no longer being applied to it. And instead, you're seeing things like utility and working mans. And if you look at the marketing materials, you're showing them not next to like AI and strobe lights and robots and whatnot.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
They want to attract outdoorsy types, tradespeople, salt of the earth-esque 150. So positioning it more in line with the traditional pickup market rather than some futuristic Mars roving vehicle that it initially debuted as.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Yeah, this has been a major pillar of the Maha Make America Healthy Again movement. And this is a major wake-up call for a lot of these snacking and food companies because there's a reason they put these dyes in food. Studies have shown that brightness and saturation of food does change. increase consumer perceptions and purchase behavior.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
If you're seeing these bright things like neon lights that you can't help but look at and can't help but gravitate towards. And if you go the opposite direction, less saturated, less colorful, that's perceived as less attractive and less tasty as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So if you cut down on the vibrancy of these colors, you're going to sell less of your tasty treats because people are looking at them and they're perceived as less tasty and less, you know, treats in general. So definitely a major kind of crossing the Rubicon moment for a lot of these companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And I do think you're seeing some brands creatively get around it as well. One brand that we've talked about in this show before actually is Ruffles. They are introducing this brand called Simply Ruffles Hot and Spicy that aren't that flaming hot red that you associate with spicy stuff. They're actually just orangish and actually give off this aura of being healthier because of that.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Yeah, I definitely fall into that wink, wink category because, you know, as we approach this mythical threshold of AGI, artificial general intelligence, where these models think at human or beyond human level intelligence, you do never know. Maybe they do become our overlords. Maybe we do enter a Terminator scenario.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So I do think we're trending towards healthier snacks in general. So maybe toning down the neon won't have the outsized effect that a lot of people think it might have. Let's move on.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
We may not be screwing iPhones together, but check the bottom of your yogurt and prescription drugs for some Made in America stickers in the coming months because Chobani and Roche announced plans to set up factories in the good old U.S. of A. yesterday.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Chobani is opening a massive million-square-foot factory in New York State that will cost at least $1.2 billion as it looks to increase its capacity to meet growing demand. Chobani actually started in New York back in 2005, so Governor Kathy Hochul threw a bevy of tax incentives its way in order to ensure it set up shop in its hometown.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
Also yesterday, the Swiss drugmaker Roche announced it will plow $50 billion into manufacturing in the U.S. over the next five years, creating 12,000 jobs in the process. Switzerland is only looking at a 10% tariff right now, but that is set to jump to 31% once Trump's 90-day pause expires.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
The pharmaceutical industry at large is also on edge as Trump gears up for sector-specific import tariffs, hence the game planning from Roche to beef up its U.S.-based production centers.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
So, Neil, for all the economic chaos the tariff rollout and pauses have caused, there has been a steady stream of announcements coming from companies who, one, want to dodge Trump's tariff hammer, and two, we're already planning on investing in these factories in the first place.
Morning Brew Daily
Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
And then shifting from dairy to pharmaceuticals, Roche is not the only one who has been lining up to invest in America either. Novartis, another Swiss drug maker, announced a $23 billion investment earlier this month. Johnson & Johnson pledged $55 billion back in March. Eli Lilly also unveiled this $27 billion plan in February. A lot of it
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is because Trump has one signal that he wants drug makers to restore manufacturing in the U.S., but also these sector-specific tariffs that we've talked about when it comes to semiconductors are also likely going to apply to pharmaceuticals as well.
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So that is why you're seeing kind of this parade of announcements of R&D centers, of manufacturing all across the country in order to dodge those tariffs coming down the pipeline. Up next, there is a major rice shortage in Japan. TastyTrade.
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And maybe just maybe politeness is going to be the very thing that separates, you know, the survivors from the non-survivors. So I'm with Sam Altman. You do never know. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you ever found a really good throw blanket for your couch?
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Wise Business provides you with one account for all your international business finances. You can pay vendors, suppliers, and manage expenses in over 40 currencies.
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Yeah, there's definitely been some logistical issues with getting the rice from suppliers out to people in grocery stores as well. But also there was these record-breaking temperatures in 2023 that really affected that crop. There's also been a rise in tourists. I feel like we've talked about this so much on the show. So many tourists rushed to Japan today.
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Tesla's Terrible Q1 Prompts Musk Return? & Companies Face RFK Jr.'s Food Dye Ban
putting, you know, increased demand on their dwindling supply. And then also there was a variety of natural disaster warnings that caused people to stockpile things. So it was just a combination of a lot of factors that led to, you know, these unprecedented headlines of importing foreign rice.
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Zwei französische Schwimmer haben letztes Monat ein Video veröffentlicht, das zeigt, wie die Außenseite ihrer Medaillen angefangen hat zu ressemblieren zu Krokodil-Flecken und nicht zu den günstigeren. Und fast 100 Athleten haben gefragt, nach welchen Medaillen sie sich verwendet haben, nachdem sie sich verwendet haben.
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Aber LVMH hat versucht, sich von den falschen Medaillen entfernen zu lassen, beantragend, dass Chamais sie nur designt hat. Es war der französische Zimt, der sie tatsächlich hergestellt hat, was ihre Verlängerung zu einer Veränderung in ihrer Warnis-Formulierung betrifft. Still, LVMH was everywhere at the Paris Games. Its champagne brands were in the hands of VIPs.
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French athletes rocked its luxury outfits and Louis Vuitton luggage was front and center at the opening ceremony watched by a billion people worldwide. But now it's facing the embarrassment of having its hand-designed medals very publicly lose their luster.
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Und der französische Mint hat noch eine andere Person zu verurteilen, und das sind eigentlich europäische Regulierungen, weil sie sagen, sie haben ihre Warnisch-Formel verändert, um sich dieser EU-Regelung zu verabschieden, um bestimmte Gemüse, Chromium-Trioxid, was dieses toxische Gemüse ist. Ich weiß, was es ist, lass es mir erklären. Yeah, explain it to the people at home.
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That's a chemical used to prevent metal from rusting. So they tried to fall in line with these regulations and it ended up creating a product that started to break down before you wanted to. To make matters even worse, to rub salt into the wound, it's mostly the bronze metals that are rusting. So not only did you not get first or second, but also your metal is falling apart.
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Although there are studies that show bronze metal matters... Wir sind glücklicher als die Silver-Metal-Winner. Es ist besser, im dritten Platz zu sein, als als der erste Verlierer.
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Es war wirklich lustig. Ich habe so viele verschiedene Videos und Bilder aus anderen Orten gesehen, dass es einfach nicht richtig aussieht, Schnee zu haben. Ich meine, ein Beach in Destin wurde komplett in Schnee gefüllt. Das ist Florida, über die wir hier reden. Viele verrückte Wetter-Headlines. Ich meine, New Orleans hat seinen größten Schneefall auf modernem Rekord.
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Pensacola, Florida, Mobile, Alabama. They broke 130-year-old records. I think it is just crazy to see scenes of people sledding in Houston. It also led to huge travel disruptions. One of the main places that was disrupted was Atlanta, because not only did they receive a lot of snow, but they also are dealing with the end of the national championship game that was hosted there.
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Und du hörst in der originalen Ancient Greek, oder? Oh, natürlich. Nein, ich habe... Ich habe einige der Übersetzungen gesucht. Ich kann nicht wirklich erinnern, welche ich gerade höre. Aber es ist egal. Wer die Übersetzung macht, beeinflusst die Art und Weise, wie du mit der Geschichte interagierst. Also nein, nicht Ancient Greek, aber ja, ich bin Team Audiobook.
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So shout out to anyone who had to fly through Atlanta airport, because those security lines were lost. All is not well in the land of Kirk.
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This was a little bit of a narrative violation in my mind because a lot of people associate Costco with great worker benefits, good worker pay. They have this reputation for treating their workers very well right now, but the union is pointing to Costco's record profits and saying like, hey, you guys clearly can afford it. We want a bump in pay. We want a bump in benefits. And Costco did make
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7,4 Billionen Dollar in Profit für das Jahr 2024, weshalb diese Union versucht, es als Leverage zu nutzen, um einen besseren Deal zu bekommen. Du kannst einen neuen Account sehen, der in deinen Venmo-Feeds von dir anbietet, JetBlue. Die Flugzeuge werden jetzt Venmo-Payments für Flugzeuge und einen ersten für die Flugzeugindustrie anbieten.
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Wenn du eine anstrengende Flugzeuge bist, die von der DOJ verurteilt wurde, suchst du einen Weg, neue Kunden zu erzeugen. Und Neil, ich denke, das könnte eine gute Idee sein. Venmo ist sehr einfach zu benutzen und ubiquitös in unserer Generation. Es fühlt sich also wie ein solider Plan an, der erste Anwender, wenn es um Venmo geht.
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You're a little drink, like you just do the drink emoji.
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Ichiro Suzuki ist ein Name, den auch nicht-Baseball-Fans kennen. Der elektrische Leading-Man für die Seattle Mariners hat gestern die Geschichte gemacht, als der erste japanische Spieler in die MLB Hall of Fame eingeladen wurde. Wenn das nicht genug war, war er fast der zweite unabhängige Selection, der nur ein Votier von Mariano Rivera eingeladen hat.
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Need a word with the one voter who didn't think Ichiro was Hall of Fame material. Ichiro was just that guy, Neil. He was a 10-time All-Star, Rookie of the Year, an MVP that transcended the game and helped pave the way for other juggernauts like Shohei Otani to come to the MLB via Japan.
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Jetzt ein Wort von unserem Sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, ich habe gesehen, dass du dein Brokerage-Account heute Morgen checkst. Bis zum nächsten Mal. Das war's für heute. Bis zum nächsten Mal. Don't let FOMO hurt your investing returns. Visit yahoofinance.com today.
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I didn't really even play baseball growing up, but I remember trying to be Ichiro while playing my little backyard wiffleball games.
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I aspire to be that level of locked in that I don't even know who Tom Brady is.
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I want you to share this episode of the podcast with someone who owes you some money on Venmo. Consider this a more polite way of following up than just reminding them in the app. And if you are the debtor, then consider this a reminder to pay your debts.
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RTO Wave Hits Federal Workers & $500B Investment Powers AI Industry
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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RTO Wave Hits Federal Workers & $500B Investment Powers AI Industry
The question here is how much of that gigantic federal workforce is actually currently working from home. And depending on who you talk to, you might get different answers. Senator Joni Ernst from Iowa, she released a report last year that claimed that only 6% of federal workers were actually in person full time. But then you look at the U.S.
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Office of Personnel Management and they push back on that. The OPM noted that 54% of the 2.3 million civilians employed by the federal government... Vielen Dank. who has been very vocally open about wanting to push for RTO mandates in order to shrink the federal workforce.
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They're hoping that when people have to go into the office full time, they'll just quit, which is, we've called it sneaky layoffs. It's not so sneaky. Elon has come out and said that is what he wants to happen. So it really is about where you fall politically when you are considering how to react to this RTO mandate.
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RTO Wave Hits Federal Workers & $500B Investment Powers AI Industry
Then it's been just about 100 days since the Olympics ended, but athletes' medals are already falling apart. It's Wednesday, January 22nd. Let's ride.
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Just in general though, zooming out, it definitely looks like the winds are shifting towards RTO. You mentioned all the big corporate organizations that are asking their workers to return to office, but you Ja, genau. Ja, genau.
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RTO Wave Hits Federal Workers & $500B Investment Powers AI Industry
AI-Leaders for a long time have been sounding this alarm that, hey, we need more, more of everything. We need more of the chips that you use to train the model. We need more of the electricity used to power those chips. We need more water to run these data centers. And the Die andere Seite davon ist, dass wir unseren Mund vor China halten müssen.
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Das war etwas, was Sam Altman ausgesprochen hat, dass wir diese Infrastruktur-Bildung brauchen, um uns vorzunehmen und die USA vor China in der KI zu halten.
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Und du kannst sehen, warum Trump mit uns an Bord ist, weil wenn du diese AI-Race in Sachen wie die Ökonomie und die Militär, die AI sicherlich beeinflussen wird, kannst du sehen, warum du diese massive 500-Billionen-Dollar-Joint-Venture hast, um die USA in die Vordergründe der AI-Recherche zu bringen.
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Vielen Dank. Es ist ein tolles Foto-Op. Netflix hat gestern Erneuerungen angekündigt und der König der Streamer hat seine Krone immer noch auf dem Platz. Der Streaming-Giant hat 18,9 Millionen neue Zuschauer im vierten Quartier erweitert, um 44 Prozent von einem Jahr früher. Das führt zu Revenue- und Profit-Beats im Prozess.
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Eine Kombination von Squid Games 2, die die Intrigue von Saison 1 verkündet, sowie ihr Live-Events-Katalog, das viele Augenbrauen bringt, hat Netflix in einem anderen starken Quartier gestärkt. It caps off a year where Netflix just dominated. It added a total of 41 million customers in 2024, more than double what Wall Street had expected. It is now sitting pretty with over 301 million subs.
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But remember that number because it's the last time we're going to hear it. The company has said that this earnings report will be the final time it discloses quarterly subscriber numbers as it aims to shift investor focus from subscriber growth to more traditional financial metrics. Speaking of financials, Netflix is trying to milk us all for more cash.
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It raised the price of its ad-supported tier $1 to $7.99 a month and bumped up its premium tier $2 to reach $24.99. Guess you can do that, Neil, when you are king.
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John, I have some thoughts about this and I'm going to tell a quick story to illustrate them. My mom recently added me to her audible premium account. Shout out mom. But then she was snooping on some of the books I downloaded and she was roasting my choice to listen to the Odyssey. First I had to explain to her that I wanted to brush up on. Ich hoffe, es hat euch gefallen. Was sagst du, Neil?
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And what's crazy, the company has said that advertising isn't yet a meaningful driver of revenue. They expect revenue from ads to double in 2025. So even though they have attracted all these eyeballs, they haven't quite got their ad selling apparatus up to kind of, you know, Ja, genau.
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Carry On, which was this Christmas, you know, TSA thriller, it vaulted in the top 10 all-time fills on the service, which I watched with my girlfriend. I go, really, that's top 10 all-time? But there's just something about Netflix's formula that gets people to watch and gets people to subscribe.
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Die letzten Jahre waren nicht nur ein Ausdruck von Raeguns enormen Breakdancing-Fähigkeiten. Sie waren auch ein großer Advertisement für die Luxury-Fashion-Haus LVMH. Aber nur 100 Tage später ist diese erfolgreiche Partnerschaft von, äh, von Tarnis. Die Gold-, Silber- und Bronze-Metalle, die von LVMHs Jewelry-Subsidiär Shamae gezeichnet wurden, fallen ab und verkleiden sich.
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What if people don't understand the baseball season? Use the NFL now to explain the baseball season to then explain the Champions League. No, you did very well there. But I also think this just shows how unprecedentedly rich the top flight of English soccer is right now. The Premier League just has insane wealth and depth.
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The fact that a 16th and a 17th place team can meet at the second highest level of European competition is kind of crazy. Just simply existing in English soccer means that you're going to receive a million of $150 million per season because of its lucrative TV deals. So the entire league as a whole is just richer than most of the other leagues spread across Europe.
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So I do think that it's no coincidence that nine of the top 18 revenue-generating clubs in Europe are English, and it just shows the depth and the – I was going to say the quality of this league, but – I won't even mention the product on the field, but the depth of this league is just astounding when it comes to how much money these teams are bringing in.
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I honestly want them both to lose. It truly is embarrassing. If Manchester United win, I guess I am rooting for it deep down, but I feel embarrassed that we would win and make it to the Champions League after the season that we just had. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Google hosted its big I.O.
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conference yesterday to show off all its AI and search upgrades, but a piece of hardware is stealing a lot of the headlines. Google unveiled its Android XR smart glasses prototype at their buzzy keynote, set on Warby Parker frames, which caused the glasses company to jump 15% on the announcement. They contain a discrete camera and a display in the right lens.
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You can prompt Gemini by pressing on the frame and asking it to identify a painting or pick which guidebook is best for an outdoorsy type for a trip to Japan or even do live translation. Again, still just a prototype, but according to reviews, quickly catching up to Meta's Ray-Ban glasses.
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In non-glasses news, Google also introduced a $250 a month AI Ultra subscription that gives you access to all its most powerful models. And speaking of live translation, Google Meet can now do AI-powered live voice translation, starting with English and Spanish. So Neil, no shortage of cutting edge announcements.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Then Klarna users are buying now, but they're not paying later. It's Wednesday, May 21st. Let's ride.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
The best conversations don't happen on a delay. They happen in the moment. Now remember to go call your moms and visit endthecampaign.com. The collateralized debt obligations that helped crash the economy in 2008 are back, but this time it's not subprime mortgages going under. It's burritos.
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Yeah, the glasses wars are certainly kicking off in earnest. But also, I was just cruising Reddit and X as this keynote was going on, and one user summed up the general sentiment pretty well and said, serious question, are they going to talk about something else other than AI?
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
So when we talked about that Harris Axios poll and Google falling in the rankings, maybe their over-reliance on pushing AI narratives have contributed to that. So it's interesting to see those two things kind of happen in parallel and see kind of this negative pushback from an audience on social media.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Home Depot zagged while other retailers have zicked and announced yesterday that it does not plan to implement price increases for customers, even as tariffs raise costs. It's trying to keep prices low by doing some supply chain magic, diversifying its sourcing to make use of its large domestic supply base.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
However, the company warned that some specific products may become unavailable or see price adjustments if tariffs make them impractical to stock. The announcement comes on the heels of Walmart announcing it will raise prices on certain items due to the impact of tariffs, saying that the magnitude of those costs increase is too great for the company to absorb fully.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
So, Neil, two roads diverged in the retailer woods, and Home Depot is taking the one that eats the tariffs.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Klarna, the buy-now-pay-later giant, said this week that its customers are struggling with that pesky second part as consumer credit losses shot up to $136 million, 17% higher than the first quarter last year. Those losses came on the back of a lousy consumer confidence reading, a sign that BNPL is increasingly becoming a burden that debt-saddled Americans can ill afford to bear.
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That is a good question, but this was not the first versus the world match that they've had. I mean, it goes back all the way to 1999 where Garry Kasparov played against more than 50,000 people on a Microsoft network at that time. He actually won that game after four months. Magnus Carlsen draws.
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actually drew so take that with a grain of salt but one thing that was interesting too is that people in the comments were kind of rallying for one pathway or another because everyone would vote on each move and a lot of people were saying like don't draw I know we can force a draw that would technically be a giant win for us but I want to keep playing against Magnus Carlsen how many times do you get this opportunity and then the final thing that we need to caveat this was is that it wasn't classical chess this was freestyle chess where the bishops and the knights actually get rearranged to start the board and
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So you're not just following these very set opening moves. Carlson loves playing it because he's basically conquered every other aspect of chess. So he likes this new wrinkle to it. So I do think in classical chess, Magnus Carlson would still be favored against, you know, everyone on earth. But the fact that it was freestyle means that the world had a chance here.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And Carlson was pretty complimentary of how the world did.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
I mean, how can you not? The caveat here is that only one player from each NFL team can try out for a country's given Olympic team. So that is good for international players because they can go and represent their countries. But for Americans, that means we can only pick one player from the Vikings, one player from the Dolphins, and et cetera, et cetera.
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I put together a little list because why wouldn't you? IQB, I'm going with either Patrick Mahomes or Lamar Jackson if we want a little more mobility. Running back, easy pick, Christian McCaffrey. But I also think maybe Bijan Robinson from the Falcons. Very shifty. And then wide receivers are pretty easy. Any combo of Justin Jefferson, Jamar Chase, and Tyreek Hill.
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It is very funny to imagine us playing, you know, Spain in flag football and trotting out this lineup of NFL players. But it makes sense because the NFL is making this major push into international. They have seven games internationally on the calendar this year. So what better stage to, you know, show football to the world than with your NFL players just absolutely dominating flag football?
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I hope it's a good product. If it is, like, just tough where, I don't know, the pass rush rules are just a little funky and it's just not that exciting. But if you get, you know, these players in open space, it is going to be compelling television.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
An uncertain macro environment has also put a damper on Klarna's IPO dreams, as a Swedish company pressed pause on its long-awaited public debut, citing the destabilizing impact of tariffs. Through it all, the company has been trying to channel its inner Chamath, Friedberg Sachs, and Calacanis, and going all in on AI.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
its CEO presented its earnings call on Monday using an AI-generated avatar of himself, though there have also been some rumblings that its AI aspirations have gone too far. Earlier this month, Klarna CEO Sebastian Chemekovsky said that the company began hiring human gig workers since AI by itself wasn't enough to provide quality customer service.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Neil, Klarna has so many different balls in the air right now, from replacing workers with AI to navigating an uncertain economic environment. And it's got to figure it out now or there won't be a later.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Yeah, and Klarna is trying to say that this is not actually alarm bells going off because the rise in unpaid balances is pretty low. In their words, it's still very low. The share of its total lending of these, I wanted to say subprime mortgages that have gone bad, but these loans that have gone bad rose from 0.51%. to 0.54%.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
So they're saying in the grand scheme of things, a lot of people still are paying off their burritos. But let's also talk about this big shift that they've gone through when it comes to AI. Klarna was on the forefront of this AI push. They said that one AI system could replace 700 human customer service workers. But they've also said we might have gone too far.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
They said that maybe cost became too predominant of an evaluation factor and that quality suffered as a result of that. And so now they are trying to invest in the human aspect of customer support again. Shamikovsky said that we want to have a human in the chain at all times, basically to, because they provide superior customer service to an AI bot.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
So it has been this interesting pivot from all into AI to introducing some more human touch back to Klarna.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And actually, I didn't even mention the coolest part of this introduction of consumer support workers back into their chain.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
They are doing it in an Uber-type setup where some agents who just are fans of the company, who maybe live in rural locations or even abroad, can just step in and pick up a shift on their consumer customer support hotline because he's like, a lot of our customers love Klarna. They're very knowledgeable about the product. So rather than hiring or outsourcing to a call center like that,
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
They're bringing in agents ad hoc like you do and hire an Uber driver. So Shemekovsky cannot stop innovating when it comes to customer service.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
No, it's certainly a question, but he's constantly pushing the boundaries here. We will only know in the future if those boundary pushing was actually the right strategy or not.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
It's not useless, Neil. I'm about to drop this fun fact in every single meeting I have from today until next Thursday when the streak ends. Feels like the universe is telling us to slow down and reflect, or at least double-check the date before signing anything. But I'm already looking ahead to the next palindromic date on the calendar. I've got March 3rd, 3033 circled. Let's have a party.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Yeah, it's pretty amazing that it's been able to have the success that it's had because the Pentagon blacklisting, it's got congressional scrutiny on it. It's part of a global trade war.
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But through it all, it did just have the biggest IPO of the year with no American money flowing into it, which was just something that kind of seemed a little bit unfathomable even just a few years ago because that's where all the deep-pocketed institutional investors are. That's where the deep-pocketed recreational investors, retail investors are.
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And yet here, CATL just had its Hong Kong listing. And now two of the biggest IPOs of the year have been outside of the U.S. There was also one in Japan that brought in nearly $3 billion. You have to go down to Venture Global and CoreWeave to find the first two U.S.-based IPOs that even crack the top three.
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It has been fascinating to see this kind of globalization of capital that has happened that you don't need the U.S. investor in order to have a successful debut.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
I can't even charge my iPhone and get three hours out of it. It can charge a battery in five minutes, get 320 miles. Yes, definitely a company to keep your eye on. Probably the biggest company that you should know about in terms of the global world order right now that you maybe didn't before today.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
I do think that inflation expectations and consumer sentiment did drive a lot of the rankings this year. It's part of the reason why Trader Joe's is at the top. One, they have this very clear value system. They're very firm on their corporate values, but also they haven't really raised prices.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And I think a big stat that illustrates why it's at the top is 78% of Americans have noticed increasing costs of groceries over the past year. So it makes sense that Trader Joe's topped the rankings because they have been able to to keep prices down. So this singular shift towards prices and inflation led some of those more price-conscious companies to rocket up the rankings.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, you know those conversations with your mom, but there's a delay on the phone. You say something, they talk over you, you both stop, then awkward silence.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And then also some other names that I think were interesting as they've rise and fallen through the ranks. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company, debuted at number 46 on the list. That is above OpenAI that comes in at number 55 on this list. State Farm only fell seven places after its role in the California wildfires, coming in just ahead of DraftKings at 63.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And then Home Depot was actually one of the biggest risers, jumping 24 spots to reach number 15. We're going to talk about this later in the show, but they just came out and said, we are holding prices steady. So again, it speaks to this price-conscious consumer. And then outside of Tesla, Google was one of the biggest followers, dropping 23 spots
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
to number 40 so just some interesting reshuffling amongst the middle of the rankings as well let's take a break and then talk about some really really bad soccer teams
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
From generative AI and cybersecurity to data privacy, product leaders are managing a whole lot of change. On the pod, you'll learn how your fellow product leaders are navigating innovation at their orgs.
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They're covering everything from building and implementing generative AI to modern data architecture and machine learning. Stream AWS for software companies everywhere you listen to podcasts. Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
And here's the good news.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Wise helps you manage your business's finances in 40-plus currencies, all with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs. It's fast, too. Sounds like a business's best friend. To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
There is a very important soccer game going down in Bilbao today between two very, very bad soccer clubs. Manchester United, a once proud titan of European football, is taking on Tottenham, a less proud and less titanic member of European football, in the Europa League final where stakes won't match the quality of the game. Man U and Tottenham are both stuck.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
in their worst seasons of top-flight football in their history, mired just above the relegation zone in the Premier League in 16th and 17th place. But they both have a lifeline to claw back some pride and money today. The Europa League is basically the NIT tournament to the Champions League's March Madness.
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And while winning grants you a nice trophy, the real prize is a ticket back to the big kids' table and a chance to earn a lot of cash. Any club that even makes it to the Champions League earns over $21 million just for showing up. If you make a deep run, that can net you $100 million or more. So despite unfathomably bad seasons from both, Tottenham have won just a single game since February.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Both clubs have a chance to backdoor their way into the European elite and earn a small fortune at that. Neil, I'm a Manchester United fan, and it's almost embarrassing to think that somehow we will be playing Champions League football after the sorry arse season we've had.
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Klarna Losing Millions on "Burrito Loans" & People Love Trader Joe's
Iterable fixes that. It replaces outdated marketing calendars with AI-powered, moment-based engagement. So when your customer takes an action, browses, buys, or bounces, Iterable responds instantly with personalized messaging across every channel.
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Because what they observed when they were trying to set out to build this field is that upper bowl seats are just really not that popular. Yes, they are cheaper, but you don't have a great view of the game. So what they found was that people kind of migrate down to hang out because they want to be part of the game day atmosphere, but they want to be closer to the action.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
So they usually go down to the lower bowl or just hang out near the concessions area. So they're like, what if we just got rid of that entire upper section, which is the most expensive to build, the least revenue, and just gave people more places to hang out. So you can see the thought process here of going this smaller, more fan-forward experience. So I think it's a pretty good idea.
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But I apologize to Bruno and to Lady Gaga because I have just been sleeping on your game.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
One thing that you did mention is that a lot of the revenue does come from those premium seats, and around 10% of the seats in this venue will be higher-priced premium areas, but those fans will cover 40% to 50% of the revenue each game, so it really is... hoping and praying that these higher revenue seats do cover the rest of the kind of the cost of the stadium.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
And then one thing that was interesting, the typical old Ryan Field had 47,000 seats, but it had one section of premium seating. Seating this year, the Wildcats played their first four games in a 12,000-seat temporary stadium, but their athletic director said that they actually made more revenue per game in the 12,000-seat arena because of these premium areas than the 47,000-seat arena.
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So I can't say enough how much it is important that you have these premium sections because it drives so much revenue. It's less fun, though. It is less fun.
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this song the song is incredible i know you just listened to 10 seconds just to see if you had heard it and you were like nope nothing but definitely listen to it you're gonna listen non-stop like i have it's a really really good song now a word from our sponsor yahoo finance neil did i ever tell you the story of the first stock i ever bought for as much as we hang out surprised it never came up it was sherwin williams the paint company it was winter at the time and i thought that buying a paint company before it was time for spring renovations was a good idea
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Yeah, Letnick was aiming for Treasury Secretary, but getting Commerce Secretary is probably a good compromise because you still have a role in promoting economic growth. Dr. Oz might have the most impactful role, though, because he will oversee programs that account for a quarter of the federal budget and also provide health care to around one in two Americans.
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So he has a big influence over this next administration. And then Lyndon McMahon is interesting, too, because she's been pretty vocal about the fact that Higher education has been kind of failing the workforce, so she's been advocating for jobs to require less degrees and then also increase access to technical education, more career-focused education.
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So three vastly different profiles, but three people that Trump kind of thinks are coming from the outside and can help change things up in Washington. SpaceX's Starship, the biggest rocket ever created, soared on its sixth test flight yesterday, proving that practice makes perfect, or at least less explosions.
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While the super-heavy booster managed to avoid going up in flames this time, its attempt to recreate the chopstick catch it pulled off last launch didn't go to plan with mission conditions forcing a splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico instead. It did, however, succeed in transporting its payload into suborbit.
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A single banana made the trip and completed the important objective of the test flight, which was reigniting an engine in space for the first time. So all in all, a pretty successful mission sans the chopsticks. Yeah, but that was the biggest part.
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This is a little risky. though, because Shake Shack doesn't want its brand being associated with a soggy or rubbery product. They are cooking the burger on the ground, then they will reheat it in the air, but that has its limitations.
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That being said, I absolutely love Shake Shack, so getting a Shack burger in the sky, it literally might make me fly Delta, although those limitations are a little bit of annoying. Gotta fly out of Boston, have to be over 900 miles, and gotta be first class. Yeah, so you gotta go from Boston to LA or Boston to Denver.
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Finally, it seems Airbnb's grand plan to let tourists play Gladiator in the Colosseum has ruffled some togas in Rome. Italian officials have pushed back against the rental giant's plan to turn their World Heritage site into an Airbnb experience in promotion of the new Gladiator 2 movie coming out.
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The company said it will select 16 guests to participate in two private events next year, where you can submerge yourself in ancient times with sword-on-shield combat. We are not Disneyland, we are Rome, Italian politician Enzo Fosci said in a statement last week. Neil, is Airbnb going too far here?
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The only issue was, I was a bit of a stock market newbie, so instead of buying 10 shares, I fat-fingered it and bought 100 shares at the time that translated to about $40,000. I did not have $40,000 to invest, Neil. Wait, so you bought it on margins? Somehow I bought it on margin and immediately got a notification from my brokerage saying like, hey, you do not have the funds for this.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
I mean, it would be sweet. Can you imagine, you know, LARPing and doing some sword on sword combat in the Coliseum? That's why I'm like, let's do it.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
I want you to share the podcast with someone who you do the gladiator experience with in Rome. But what's that? Oh, it's 16 guests. Guess you got to share today's episode with 15 of your closest friends. I don't even have 15 close friends.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Let's run it back tomorrow.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
I don't know. It was all a little bit murky and I panic sold most of it right away. But the moral of the story is the place to mess around and test new ideas is on Yahoo Finance, not in your brokerage account. Yahoo Finance has real-time market data so you can construct a portfolio and a watch list without putting real money on the line. Much more responsible than college Toby.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Plus, people are buying not just things for their day-to-day needs, but also those want-to-have items. After declining for 11 straight quarters, sales of general merchandise, which doesn't include grocery, have increased for the second quarter in a row. Walmart is looking like Saquon Barkley in the open field ahead of the holiday shopping season.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
It's got a head of steam and looking to run some people over.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
And interestingly enough, that households making $100,000 a year are typically Amazon's bread and butter competitors. So you mentioned Amazon. Walmart is infringing. They're stepping on their turf because Walmart has created this really strong online operation that is almost rivaling Walmart at this point. You can now buy online. You can pick up at thousands of stores.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
They have this program called Walmart Plus where you get same-day grocery delivery. So they really are trying to take business away from Walmart because- Sorry, yeah. Take business away from Amazon because it has been this big push and pull fight. Walmart's online sales have grew 22% in the United States in the last quarter. So it's clearly got its sights set on the biggest e-com player as well.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
But as you mentioned, Walmart is actually decently situated to weather tariffs. About two-thirds of its products are actually sourced within the United States. And remember, a lot of Walmart's business actually comes from its grocery division. When you're not getting, it's not supplying its groceries from China, that is all sourced more locally.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
So that is one thing that can, 60% of its revenue came from the grocery category last year. So potentially it's a little bit more insulated. And one thing that Walmart CFO has said is that Their general merchandising products typically have a little bit of a higher markup than groceries, so they have some wiggle room there.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
If they wanted to choose to not pass on those costs to customers, they could just eat into their own margin a little bit. So they do have some kind of slack to play with, even though that these tariffs are something that they have to kind of broadly say, like, hey, prices might go up, but they are trying to say, we'll do everything we can not to pass those prices on to consumers where possible.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Private equity giant Blackstone took a break from rolling up companies to focus on rolls and hoagies, taking a majority stake in Jersey Mike's yesterday that values the sandwich chain at around $8 billion, including debt, onions, and extra olive oil and vinegar. Jersey Mike's is the second largest sandwich company in the U.S. by sales following Just Subway, but it didn't start out that way.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Back in 1975, Mike's founder, Peter Cancro, opted to skip college and instead borrowed $125,000 at 17 years old with the help of his high school football coach to buy the sandwich shop he had grown up working at. Fast forward to today and Jersey Mike's has more than 3,000 locations, but Cancro and Blackstone think they can reach 10,000 locations eventually.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
The deal also makes Cancro one of the 500 richest people in the world with a net worth of $7 billion. So not bad for the 17-year-old. Now Jersey Mike's locations make about $1.4 million per unit, more than double that of its rival Subway. So it looks like Blackstone's got themselves a winner.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Then, Jersey Mike's just got bought out by private equity, and I hope Danny DeVito gets his bag. It's Wednesday, November 20th. Let's ride.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
So I do just want to compare Jersey Mike's and Subway once again. Jersey Mike's is selling for $8 billion with 3,000 locations. Subway sold for $9.6 billion with 37,000 locations. So Subway had 12 times more locations, but only sold for about 20% higher value.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
So clearly, franchisee success, the fact that Jersey Mike's is making $1.3 million per unit is more important than the overall unit count here when you're looking at private equity valuations.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
I thought you were gonna say Snooki was the most, second most, or the most popular name from Jersey Shore, but you know, Bruce Springsteen works too. The car brand Jaguar is making headlines for dropping a colorful and confusing new ad to announce its refreshed brand. The only issue is, as many have pointed out, there's no cars in it.
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Instead, a group of models dressed in futuristic get-ups and eye-popping makeup kind of wiggle around to some techno-industrial beat in a sci-fi-looking landscape. There's an elevator involved. It's a whole thing. But Jaguar is hoping it is the start of a long road back to relevance for the once iconic British brand. that has been relegated to a footnote of the modern car industry.
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Jaguar sold fewer than 67,000 cars globally last year and less than 8,000 in the U.S., down 80% since 2017. So it made the bold choice to switch things up, introducing new minimalist logos and emblems to replace the well-known growling cat badge.
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It also dropped a mismatch of new slogans like delete ordinary, live vivid, and copy nothing to try and paint a picture that this ain't your Bond villain's Jaguar anymore. In the lead up to this rebrand, Jaguar cold models, which its CEO said had close to zero profitability until it was producing just one vehicle, the F pace SUV.
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But now it is replacing everything gas powered and launching three new high end EVs instead. So they are really starting over from scratch here, Neil.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
execs said about this new image is that they expect to retain just 15% of their existing customers. So that is pretty insane. There is no real plan B here. They are going all in on plan A. They're going all in on luxury EVs.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
From the ad perspective, though, a lot of people are saying this is a bit of a head scratcher because if the goal is to sell cars and you show an ad with dancing models, it's going to be hard to maybe sell those cars. So
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
That was not a very controversial take, but Jaguar said like, hey, we're trying to break away from the traditional old money aesthetic of Jaguar to this new, brand new, colorful, bold. I mean, it's like a word salad of phrases that they put out in association with this ad. They said 800 people have worked on this rebrand. And the guy who led it joked that we have not been sniffing the white stuff.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
So really trying to drive up press, really trying to go bold with this. We'll see what the cars actually look like.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
The general reaction was like if you are trying to reintroduce yourself to the world, like you shouldn't do it with some esoteric high-level concept. Like you need to just show like, hey, we are still the brand that makes these high-quality cars that you guys have used to know us by. So people are saying that they may have just gone too far down the like conceptual path.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Neil, I might be losing my fastball. I might have to hang up the mic because I have never in my life heard that song even for a second. You know what's worse? I have never even heard the second fastest song to reach a billion streams either. That is Seven by Jungkook and Lotto. But then finally, Three, Four, and Five are Flowers by Miley Cyrus, Espresso by Sabrina Carpenter, and Stay by Kid LAROI.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
But this is just the start of the rebrand. So maybe they're obviously going to unveil some cars later. Actually, they are unveiling their first car at Art Basel this year in early December. So I guess circle your calendars there if you want to see what their team that was sniffing white stuff came up with. Up next, Northwestern is rethinking what a college football stadium can look like.
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High-Income Shoppers Flock to Walmart & Jersey Mike’s $8B Bet to Take On Subway
Yeah, I mean, it is a bold move to reduce your stadium capacity by 30%. One thing that they did say, though, is that the overall footprint of the property is actually going to be 78% larger, and that is because they constructed about 200,000 square feet of just shops and lounge areas and places where you can hang out around the stadium.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Well, you can in cybersecurity. With Sophos, your business gets both elite defense and expert offense.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
This section of the soda aisle is growing and heating up big time, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Skims Rescue Nike? & Meta Reveals Globe-Spanning Undersea Cable
This collab seems like a step in the right direction, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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...
Morning Brew Daily
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
However you do it, Tasty Trade's got the advanced tools you need to tackle stocks, options, futures, and more all in one place.
Morning Brew Daily
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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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
While adding nugs might not seem to jive with the rest of Taco Bell's cuisine, adding chicken is most certainly in line with where the fast food market as a whole is heading. As the cost of beef rises, more and more restaurant chains from McDonald's to Chipotle are relying on chicken to be its main growth driver.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Taco Bell's former CEO Mark King said during an investor day last year that a large percentage of our business is beef, but the Gen Z consumer wants chicken.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Neil, nuggets are a dangerous category to enter into because incumbents like Chick-fil-A and McDonald's have their extremely loyal followers, but I think Taco Bell looked at where the industry winds were blowing and realized they'd be clucked if they didn't go for nuggets.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
I actually think you're dead right, too, because I read an Eater article. They did test out the new nuggets from Taco Bell, and they said they have a thick and craggy coating that's more akin to a Raising Cane's than a Chick-fil-A or a McDonald's or a Wendy's. They found the nuggets to be pleasantly juicy and crunchy.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
They didn't use the word exactly crispy, but they did love that breading, and I do think you're right. One thing, too— Obviously, chicken is very popular right now. McDonald's just rolled out the chicken Big Mac. They are seeing a greater percentage of their sales come from chicken than ever before. But also, market research shows that Gen Z doesn't just like chicken.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
They specifically prefer boneless chicken and chicken tenders to traditional boneless wings. So I think there were two industry tailwinds here that Taco Bell was looking at. One, everybody loves chicken. But then two, specifically younger customers love boneless chicken as well.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
I was going to ask your opinion on these. So it's offering, they want you to pair it with three new sauces. One is just the chain's signature bell sauce. Two is a jalapeno infused honey mustard sauce. And then three is a spicy ranch sauce that is concocted in collaboration with Hidden Valley. Of those three sauces, Neil, what are you ordering as your side dipping?
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
We're in the wrong industry because I want to be the 100 sauce tester right there because I also have a lot of opinions on sauces. I actually disagree with you, though. I think the spicy ranch is delicious because that is what I do at Chick-fil-A is I get one ranch, one buffalo, and I mix them together. They just took that mixing step out of it for me.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Now let's sprint to the finish with a few headlines you may have missed. The FTC is getting serious about cracking down on junk fees. Yesterday, the commission passed a rule requiring ticket sellers, hotels, and short-term rentals to show total prices up front, including all those annoying extra fees, so customers aren't caught off guard anymore when they check out.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
So no more finding the perfect weekend getaway only to get hit with a hefty resort fee or buying a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert only to see the price rocket upwards at the end of the checkout process. Definitely not speaking from experience there. This rule to push those hidden fees to the forefront of advertised prices is likely the final act in Joe Biden's war on junk fees.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Neil, how's the war gone, by the way?
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
I thought you were going to say Atlas shrugged at first. And I was like, wait, that's foundational to you. But an Atlas is just as good.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
I didn't know you knew so many Honda and partnership or benefit to Nissan is that Nissan needs a hybrid in their lineup. They need some help with that hybrid technology. That's something that Honda has really pioneered. And then on the other side of things, remember, even though Nissan has fallen a little bit in the EV race, Nissan was one of the first, the OGs of the EV.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Now, a word from our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport. Neil, got a question for you. You are a road trip guy. Give me some of the elements you are looking for on the perfect road trip.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Remember the Nissan Leaf? It had its growing pains, it didn't exactly set the world on fire, but Honda could probably get some EV technology out of this partnership as well, so those are two of potentially the synergies that they're looking at at this potential merger. Finally, a famous British cello player was forced to cancel a concert after the airline he was flying on
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
didn't let his instrument on the plane. This wasn't any old cellist. Sheku Kana Mason was a household name after performing at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding. And this wasn't any old cello. Kana Mason's cello is worth about $3.1 million.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
But after his original flight was canceled, the gate agents on his rebooked Air Canada flight denied his cello from coming on, citing a policy that says the extra seat for his instrument needed to be booked 48 hours in advance. Neil, as a former cellist, did this strike a chord with you? No.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Right, this was not the first time it has happened to Conor Mason either. He has been very vocal about it. I never thought about transporting a cello because, yeah, obviously you can't check it because it's so delicate. You can't put it in the overhead bin either, so it is one of those things where you have to just sit next to it on the plane.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
And I didn't even know that airlines even had policies related to it. Why would Air Canada have a 48-hour policy specifically relating to instruments traveling with you in the seat? I guess this isn't the first time they've dealt with it either, but just a whole different world that I've never even considered, but now I'm kind of fired up about.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Yeah, but toss them— toss them beneath in the, in the cargo hold. I mean, mine aren't $3.1 million. Let's just be clear.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
I want you to share the pod with someone you want to go try those Taco Bell nugs with. Neil and I will be venturing to our local Taco Bell come Thursday to give them a taste test. So share the podcast with someone who you want to accompany you because taste tests are always better with friends.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
The Range Rover Sport has all the bases covered. It's got adaptive off-road cruise control that monitors ground conditions and acclimates to your present terrain, as well as dynamic suspension that reduces unwanted body movements.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Well, finish the pod first, then the open road is all yours. Explore the Range Rover Sport at LandRoverUSA.com. That's LandRoverUSA.com. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is one of the most well-known stock indexes in the world. and it just did something it hasn't done since Jimmy Carter was in office.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Like Pep Guardiola's Manchester City side, things have been going decidedly downhill recently for the Dow. It has now finished in the red for nine straight trading days, suffering its longest losing streak since 1978. To make matters worse, the Dow has been heading south while everyone else heads north.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Both the broader S&P 500 index and the tech-focused Nasdaq have notched record highs in the last week compared to a 3.5% decline for the Dow. What's dragging it down? Well, UnitedHealth Group is down 3%. Thank you for watching. Still, more than two-thirds of the Dow Jones members have also fallen over this same period, so it's not just a one-company issue.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Neil, as we enter into the last few weeks of the year with an important Fed meeting on the horizon, stocks are exhibiting some squirreliness.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Then Taco Bell is loco for pollo. It's adding a surprise new chicken dish to its menu this week. It's Wednesday, December 18th. Let's ride.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Right. It's more of a headline, like you get to say, longest losing streak since 1978. But it is almost opposite day as you go down the Dow because you have companies like NVIDIA who have been actually stinking it up recently a little bit. It's down 17% since it hit a record high in November 21st. Sherwin-Williams is down about 7%. That's a recent addition to the index.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Boeing has jumped 10% over that nine-day losing streak and is actually the top performing stock in the index over that period as well. It is also the biggest loser if you zoom out to the year as a whole.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
So this nine-day period has just been a little funky where part of the reason why you see all the other indexes around it going up is that the Magnificent Seven, those tech-focused companies, have climbed about 8% in that same period, which is pushing the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 up.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
higher, but it is just a little bit of a weird time on the Dow, even though it is technically a historical losing streak.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Right. It seems like right now Powell wants to put the car in neutral, not to go down another road trip analogy here. But the Fed might be taking its foot off the brake after lowering this last final time to get to a more neutral interest rate that it's no longer restricting growth, but they also don't want to provide any additional growth stimulus either.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
So finding that equilibrium is something that Jerome Powell's comments have indicated that he is more likely to do. That being said, the market does forecast potentially three rate cuts next year. It just won't be front-loaded by any means.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
He's definitely emboldened. The surprising thing about the ABC settlement, which is, let's start there... is that the constitutional standard in defamation cases is usually pretty defendant-friendly because in America we have very strong freedom of speech laws, rights literally enshrined in the Constitution. So a lot of people are like, whoa, why did ABC end up settling here?
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Part of the reason is we probably don't know why they settled. Maybe something that they didn't want to come out and discover. They didn't want this to go in front of a jury. Potentially some things said behind the scenes contributed to them settling. As for the Des Moines case, this is a non-traditional claim. Remember, it's not technically a libel suit. It is
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
going against, they're saying Trump is trying to say that they violated Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive ads. That one seems like it's less likely to succeed.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
But just in general, zooming out here, it is a bit, the word that has been tossed around by a few outlets is that it is a chilling kind of effect to go after these and use your intimidation power as the president-elect to go after these media organizations.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
As part of this prompt, there was the question of these are books you revisit multiple times throughout your life, that you've read multiple times. And by that definition, the only foundational texts that I've read multiple times are mostly sci-fi or fantasy novels. The Eragon series growing up, I read multiple times.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
And then the final, you know, aspect of this case is that trust in the media is at an all-time low. So maybe ABC didn't want to go in front of a jury because there have been instances in the last decade where a jury has not been favorable to a media company. What I'm thinking of is in 2016,
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
A Florida jury ordered Gawker, which was this online media publication, to pay Hulk Hogan more than $115 million in damages, which ended up bankrupting the media site. So maybe they just did a quick calculus here and say, we don't want to go down that road because juries have proven to be unfavorable in the past in cases similar to this one.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
It is, and this is a chunky fundraise because, yeah, $10 billion, largest in the history of venture capital. Looking into it a little bit more, some people actually think, actually, Ghosty, who is the CEO of Databricks, said that a lot of these late-stage investors, these big funds like Andreessen Horowitz, don't really have a ton of companies in which they can deploy their capital.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
There aren't that many companies that can even take a $10 billion or even need a $10 billion funding round. The only names that he threw out were Databricks, Stripe, or maybe OpenAI. So part of this could just be market conditions that these funds need to deploy their capital. And Databricks is saying, all right, I guess we're the only ones on the table for it.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
World War Z by Max Brook is a book that I've read is a book I've read three times. The Red Rising series. Most of these were books that I did read as a kid. Then you revisit as an adult. There's something just very cathartic about that. But, you know, if we expand the definition beyond just books you've read multiple times, what are your foundational texts?
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
But also, Databricks is doing very well. One of its big competitors is Snowflake, kind of in the same data warehousing game, in the data slicing and dicing game. And right now, their market cap is Stoflake is a public company, is similar to Databricks, is new funding valuation after this latest funding round.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
So I think we're gearing up for a little bit of a data software war between these two companies.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
You can stay in private. And one thing about Databricks, again, it's a little hard to wrap your mind around unless you are a data engineer. But some of the quotes coming out of people who use it, one person, Dan Demir, who is the chief product officer of ThredUp, said, you can pry it out of my dead, cold fingers.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
So it is one of those companies with a very fanatical following in the industry that it serves. So even if you are sitting here at home and say, I don't know what Databricks does, I Talk to your data engineer friends. They'll know exactly what they do. Up next, Taco Bell gets nuggy with it. The newest way Taco Bell wants you to live, Moss, is by getting into the chicken game.
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Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?
Starting Thursday, the chain is adding chicken nuggets to its menu for a limited time, but they aren't just any old nugs. They'll be marinated in a zesty jalapeno buttermilk and fried with a coating of tortilla chips mixed with breadcrumbs for little Taco Bell twists on the fast food staple.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
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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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Jack Dorsey set the social media site he invented a titter this past week when he posted four simple words, delete all IP law. Then the new owner of his site, Elon Musk, added fuel to the fire by replying, I agree. The seemingly casual exchange between the former and current owners of the site, now known as X, deserves scrutiny because what? Where is this anti-IP sentiment coming from?
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And why do some of the most powerful people in tech agree on this issue? It's not totally clear what compelled Jack to log on and start some discourse, but his thoughts do come against a backdrop of AI companies staring down multiple lawsuits claiming they violated copyrights when they feed content to train their AI models.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
But yes, a very fun site. Do you have the URL on you right here? We'll put it in the show notes. We'll put it in the show notes. Go check it out. It's pretty fun to just mess around. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you ever notice how some puzzle pieces just click into place?
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
OpenAI and Microsoft are currently locked in a battle with the New York Times for the unpermitted use of their articles to train its large language models, so the AI industry has begun to mount a counterattack.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
In the UK, AI companies are pushing to reform copyright protections in order to make owners opt out if they don't want their work to be used to train AI systems rather than the other way around. Also in Jack and Elon's corner are some pro-AI believers who say that automated IP fines for AI infringement may become the substitute for putting poor people in jail for cannabis possession.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
as tech evangelist Chris Messina put it. But critics have fired back. Delete IP law and you delete one of the main incentives to create at all, Ed Newton Rex, a former executive at Stability AI, told Fast Company. So Neil, it was just a simple post, but it set off this very serious debate on how to handle IP law in the age of AI.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Yeah, so some of the arguments for reforming or, I mean, deleting is a little extreme IP law. One, the current system wasn't built for this new age. There's so many legal gray areas. Is scraping the internet for training data fair use or is it theft? The law doesn't really know yet, so there probably should be some level of reform there.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And you're right, creativity can't really scale up if everything is locked up. If every piece of content needs licensing, innovation is going too slow. So in this arms race against China, that is one of the main reasons for just freeing up these AI companies. And then like the third kind of, I don't know, metaphorical or philosophical argument
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
approach to this is that AI can't necessarily copy in the traditional sense. They don't memorize or reproduce exact texts, or at least they don't do it intentionally. They synthesize patterns. So the argument I've seen is saying that a writer can't read books before writing a book of their own. Of course, it's just an input, and then you create this different output.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So those are some of the reasons for why tech people and AI evangelists say that we need to change the current system because right now it's far too onerous, far too much of a burden on innovation in these very important space right now.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Ah, you're one of those types of puzzlers. But that feeling of satisfaction is exactly how it feels when you pour Planet Oat into your coffee, or your cereal, or your smoothie. It doesn't just mix, it belongs.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
I just wanna shout out JetBlue here, because without JetBlue, I don't know if we'd get to this point where it is table stakes, because they pioneered the perk, really. They've been offering free Wi-Fi since 2013. The only outlier here, or the only major outlier here, is Southwest now, who,
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Just loves doing things differently and still has not said whether they are considering adding free Wi-Fi onboard. They give you texting. They give you the ability to stream their movies, but they still don't let you browse the Internet for free.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So we'll see if kind of the laggard of the industry, the duckling that's always tried to do things differently, falls in line or if they still just want to be unique and different like they always have been in the past.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
What's in a name? Shakespeare once mused, and now Sam Altman is doing the same, mainly because the names that his company, Open AI, uses for its models stink. Yesterday, Altman posted on an ex, how about we fix our model naming by this summer and everyone gets a few more months to make fun of us, which we very much deserve until then. What's he referring to?
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Well, if you fire up chat GPT, you can choose which model you use. There's GPT-40, 01 Mini, 01 Mini Deep Research. There's also a new class of models named GPT-40. GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 Mini, and GPT-4.1 Nano. It's so bad, Neil, I can't even get them out. Obviously, these conventions have led to a lot of confusion amongst users, especially those unfamiliar with what separates one model from another.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
But based on Altman's tweet, it looks like change might be coming as soon as this summer.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And if you're after some indulgence, the barista lover's version was literally crafted under the watchful eyes of baristas. It steams and frosts like a dream. So if you're looking for the missing piece in your morning routine, it's planted oat. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit plantedoat.com for more.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
You want to know what the funniest timeline here is that Jack Dorsey is arguing to delete all IP law. So then Sam Allman goes and names his new social media site Twitter and say, how you like that? Well, Jack Dorsey, let's see if you like IP law now.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Finally, if you, like me, have been combing through every single photo of Roy McIlroy's victory at the Masters, you may have noticed an interesting name on the byline of some of those picks. 13-time MLB All-Star Ken Griffey Jr. Yes, the former big league slugger who played 22 seasons and hit the 7th most home runs of all time is now a credentialed sports photographer, and he's good.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
His photo of McElroy hunched over on the 18th green of Augusta, screaming into the turf as he let out years worth of emotion and frustration, perfectly captures the burden lifted from golf's biggest star. Griffey Jr. picked up photography after hitting his mid-30s to be a good dad. His daughter said, wanted to make sure dad is paying attention, so he started bringing a camera to her games.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Since then, he's shot everything from NFL to MLS games, before capturing Rory's cathartic Masters victory. Pretty cool post-baseball career, Neil.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
In the high-stakes geopolitical poker match between the two biggest superpowers, China might have the stronger hole cards. Over the past few days, the U.S. 's chief trade adversary has pulled two major levers. The first was suspending exports of so-called rare earth metals, which are critical to a range of technologies from electric vehicles and smartphones to wind turbines and missiles.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
These materials are often turned into powerful magnets, crucial to heavy industry, and China controls 90% of the world market. When you zoom in further to sector-specific needs, it gets even more concentrated. 99.9% of the world's dysprosium, for instance, which Nvidia used to create capacitors on its chips, comes from China.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So any reduction in supply has the chance to cripple critical industries. If exerting its iron fist over rare earth elements wasn't a big enough warning shot, China also ordered its domestic airlines to stop taking deliveries of Boeing airplanes.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
For Boeing, whose self-inflicted issues could fill lots of overhead bin space, this marks a major setback in one of the world's most important aviation markets. China is projected to account for 20% of global aircraft demand. over the next decade.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So Neil, you have China moving to limit these all-important metals, which could lead to disastrous consequences for everything from American manufacturing to military power and hitting a struggling U.S. manufacturing giant while it's down. In other words, it's fighting back.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And China's like, listen, we have Airbus too. They buy more of their planes from Airbus anyway. So yes, it would impact China's ability to sustain its growing airline industry. But they're saying we could probably get by without Boeing for a while. So we don't necessarily need you. We have this other manufacturer to step in and fill the gap.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
I do want to talk about these rare earth metals, though, because they are very important. They impact so many aspects of your life. A good proxy for how it might impact your life If it beeps, it probably depends on these rare earth minerals. And it's not just the metals themselves, like literally getting them from the earth.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
It's the refining capacity that China has that makes it such an integral part of the supply chain. Even if you have deposits within your country, which some countries do, Ukraine has been one that has been tossed up a lot in negotiations where Trump is like, we can source a lot of our minerals from there.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
But if you don't have the refining capacity that China has, then these minerals are functionally useless. You need to turn them into these powerful magnets that are used in things like batteries, wind turbines, LED light bulbs, semiconductors, like the list goes on. So it's not just that they have the supply. They also have the ability to turn them into something useful.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Yeah, and these weapons are the cornerstone of kind of Americans' military. So if you lose the cornerstone, you can see why the Department of Defense is all up in arms trying to figure out our own domestic supply chain, our own domestic ability to refine these things. Because without them, you're right, it takes a lot of metal to create the U.S. military.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Then China turned the trade war up another notch by halting the export of rare earth metals. It's Wednesday, April 16th. Let's ride.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And we are just massively exposed to China, which is why they're pulling this all-important lever.
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Yeah, I would call there was a smaller smoking gun within the larger smoking gun. And that was Mark Zuckerberg himself suggested spinning off Instagram followers. a year before the FTC even opened its first antitrust investigation into the company. He suggested internally the quote, extreme step of spinning Instagram out as a separate company.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
He wrote that while most companies resist breakups, the corporate history is that most companies actually perform better when they've been split up. So the FTC was licking their chops and saying, Listen, he's almost arguing our case for us right here.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
But the reason why Zuck was kind of proposing this pretty drastic step is that he was looking into the future and saying, hey, there is, and these are his words, a non-trivial chance we will be forced to spin out Instagram and perhaps WhatsApp in the next five to 10 years. He was looking at kind of the regulatory landscape, especially with the Democratic president coming into office.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
He mentioned that as one of the big factors as well. So That was something the FTC was definitely looking at, saying he clearly knew that maybe they were towing the line here of antitrust scrutiny and that he was taking the initiative and suggesting it, which supports their case because they're arguing for a very similar thing right now.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Yeah, and I will say the defense is kind of getting some laurels on social media too because the slide deck they've been using has been animated and he's making jokes. The lawyer is making jokes like that slide that you just depicted, like a boxing ring with app logos in it.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So they're almost taking it like saying, they're like laughing at the suit basically and injecting humor into their defense because it's so laughable to think that they're only competing with MeWe and Snapchat when there is just this massive overall landscape that, of apps like TikTok that you can switch interchangeably between Meta and them.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
And then the final, just kind of like funny detail that has come out so far is that in that smoking gun email, later in the chain, you scroll down and for some reason, Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg start discussing Catan playing and Sheryl Sandberg's like, hey, I'd love for you to teach me one of these days.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So if you're scrolling through headlines about Meta and you see Catan mentioned, it really was just because in this very important moment in the company's history, Somehow, Settlers of Catan came up, so if you are a Catan fan, press the button Catan mentioned in this story.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
The unknown territory is an interesting place to be because is it structural where people just don't want these goods anymore, where they think the economy is crashing, or is there something else going on here? And LVMH kind of tried to push analysts towards the latter because one thing they called out was the Japanese market had this huge boom in demand last year.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
from China shoppers coming over and taking advantage of the weak yen to buy very cheap luxury goods. I mean, if you thought everybody in your life went to Japan these past few years because of the weak yen, you weren't imagining that. A lot of people did go over there. And so the CFO said, we are not having the benefit of the push this year.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
Honestly, I took a lot of optimism from this because I don't want the year to fly by. It still feels like we're in the early inning. So I want to have 19 miles left of the marathon that is 2025. And I want it to be early afternoon on a Tuesday. There's still so much to get done and so many podcasts to record, Neil. Though I will say the first part of the year has definitely felt like a Monday.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
So that's one issue that was kind of just a one-off thing last year. But you're right. The U.S. is facing very weak consumer sentiment, and a lot of the deceleration in the U.S. came from specifically not the higher end, but Sephora and their wine and spirits division. Those are not necessarily the upper echelon of goods that LVMH offers. So the U.S.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
is definitely a warning sign facing weaker consumer sentiment, as well as the Chinese market, which you're right, is also facing headwinds of their own within their own economy.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
He is. Up next, let's talk IP law.
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
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Boeing Caught in US-China Crossfire & Zuckerberg Takes The Stand
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Here's why my theory why cottage cheese is doing so well is the big gripe that people have with cottage cheese is the texture. But then they figured out, wait a second, we don't have to deal with that soupy, lumpy texture. We can just blend it and include it in a lot of recipes. A lot of these viral recipes include something that... Das ist etwas, was nichts wie Cottage Cheese aussieht.
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Ich spreche von Cookie-Dough-Rezepien mit Cottage Cheese, Pasta-Sauces. Ich habe Eis mit Cottage Cheese als Basis gesehen. Ich habe Brot mit Cottage Cheese als Basis gesehen. Ich denke, es ist Versatilität und der Fakt, dass Menschen realisieren, They could transform it from this lumpy soupy thing into something delicious is why we've seen such a tailwind for this product in recent years.
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Und Neil, meine Augen sind jetzt im Studio und schauen auf einen einzigen Kaffee von Good Culture Cottage Cheese. Du wolltest das live testen, weil du noch nie Cottage Cheese hatten. Du hast es seit über 30 Jahren gesagt. Du öffnest es jetzt. Du wirst es probieren.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Nein, ich bin kein Fan. Wirklich? Okay. Es ist zu süß. Oh mein Gott. Ich glaube, ich habe noch nie Cottage Cheese gegessen. Ich habe es nur gemerkt, weil ich es noch nie gegessen habe. Die Texture ist immer noch schlecht. Ich würde sagen, richtig? Es ist sehr lumpig. Es ist nur so, dass ich lieber Joghurt oder fast alles andere haben würde.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Also denke ich, dass ich immer noch auf der Bandwagon bin, dass man es in irgendeiner Art und Weise transformieren muss, weil straight Cottage Cheese ist immer noch ein bisschen viel für mich. Aber ja, Cottage Cheese ist definitiv etwas, das We have been seeing... I'm sorry, I'm trying to get it out of my mouth right now.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
We need a little water, but maybe we're not on the cottage cheese bandwagon is what it's sounding like. Now let's sprint to the finish with some additional headlines you may have missed. Up first, Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission are beefing again.
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The agency filed a lawsuit against the richest man in the world, alleging he violated securities laws by failing to properly disclose he had amassed an ownership of more than 5% of Twitter shares back in 2022, which likely would have pushed the stock price up.
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According to the complaint, Musk's delayed disclosure let him purchase stock at artificially low prices, resulting in savings of about $150 million. Now the SEC is looking for Elon to disgorge those ill-gotten gains. Neil, this case is likely to be the first test of Elon's relationship to the new Trump administration, as he will likely ask the Commissioner's next head to withdraw the case.
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Gibt es irgendwelche Prediktionen für das Australian Open?
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
They deserve to know if someone powerful is amassing a big stake in a company they are investing in. At least 5%. Bis zu 5% ist der Niveau. Außerdem muss man in 10 Tagen erläutern. Elon hat 11 Tage später erläutert. Deshalb ist er ziemlich gegen es. Er denkt, dass sie hier Nippeln machen. Das being said, the commission does routinely enforce this rule.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
And some people familiar with the SEC said that in order to deter others from doing the same thing, you have to make an example of someone like Elon. Because if he can get away with it and he's the richest man in the world and he makes front page news, then why would anyone else bother to comply with it as well? So I do think we could see the new administration.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Be in a tough spot here because you can't necessarily let this just fade away.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
ist in einem wirklich guten Spot, auch das ist das, was für viele Leute überraschend ist. Sie sind auf dem Weg für Rekordrevenue, sie sind auf dem Weg für Rekordpreise.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Sie sind immer noch aus diesen frischen Erinnerungen, 25% der Mitarbeiter ein paar Jahre ago in dem Jahr der Effizienz, aber hier ist Meta wieder, hier ist Zuck wieder, kind of trying to create a new corporate culture, honestly, at Meta and saying that we're cutting the fluff here, so this is not Das ist etwas, was Banken und andere große Firmen regelmäßig tun.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Sie sagen nur, wir machen einen 5%-Kuss am Boden. Und es ist etwas, was Technologien auch angefangen haben zu tun, weil letzte Woche Microsoft das selbe gemacht hat, Job-Cuts zu nutzen, um unterperformierte Mitarbeiter zu betrachten. Die FDA hat eine neue Idee, um Menschen zu versuchen, healthier zu essen. Vor dem Package Nutrition Labels.
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This new nutrition info box would give you at a glance information about saturated fat, sodium and added sugar, classifying each as low, medium or high to go along with the existing nutrition labels on the back of products. The FDA is accepting comments on the proposal for a few more months. but expect food companies to lobby against the change.
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Industry groups have pushed back on research saying front-of-package labels would change consumer behavior and said normal nutrition labels offer enough information as is. Neil, what are some of the other reasons food companies maybe aren't too happy with this potential change?
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
If you looked at the top of the free apps in the US App Store in the last week, you were greeted with an unfamiliar name atop the rankings. Xiao Hongshu, a Chinese-owned short-form video app, which can be translated as Red Note, has been perched in the top spot since Monday as millions of Americans search for a replacement for TikTok, another Chinese-owned short-form video app.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Ich war ziemlich schlecht bei Cursive, bis in der 6. Klasse. Aber viele Leute sagen, dass es nicht nur darum geht, ob man es in der Schule gelernt hat, sondern auch, ob man es auf einem Tag-zu-Tag-Basis benutzt. Es ist wie bei jedem anderen Muskel. Du benutzt es oder du verlierst es. Und niemand benutzt es diese Tage. Sie nennen es ein Quote-unquote Schmerz.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Superpower these days to find someone who actually is up to date on their cursive. It is pretty remarkable that cursive has even hung on to this day because it was on the way out all the way back in the 1890s when the typewriter was first introduced. Here we are in 2025. It is still taught in multiple states. California still teaches cursive as well.
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I do think it is a rite of passage, even if it's not something that is so functional in everyday life.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
I want you to share the podcast with a cottage cheese lover. Now, this will probably be an older person, maybe your grandparents, and that is perfect. Feel free to admit or to not admit that you were wrong about cottage cheese all along because you maybe, you probably were.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Über 300 Millionen Menschen, v.a. junge Frauen in China, nutzen die App, wo User similar brain-rotting Video-Content mit Text-based Posts teilen. Teil von Red Notes Draw ist der Fakt, dass es unter chinesischer Anwesenheit ist. Amerikaner, die es auswählen, haben Kommentare geblieben wie, wir kommen zu den chinesischen Spionen und bitten sie, uns hier zu bleiben, um die US-Autoritäten zu spüren.
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Chinese users have been more than welcoming, calling the newly joined Americans TikTok refugees, providing tutorials on how to navigate the app that is primarily written in Mandarin and asking for help with their English homework. Neil, part of this is a joke, a meme about rebelling against the US government's involvement in the TikTok ban.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
But it is also a first of its kind cultural mashup where Americans and Chinese citizens are coexisting online together. Doch drastisch unterschiedliche Erwartungen, wenn es um Kontentmoderation und freies Sprachen geht, könnten in westlichen Audienzen Red-Notes-Wachstum zerstören.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
It was nice to watch. It's very funny to watch, too, because US users are asking Chinese users to share memes within their kind of localized culture. And a lot of the times they don't make sense, but sometimes they do make sense. And it does translate across borders. That being said, though, there's definitely some hurdles to Red Note becoming an actual one for one TikTok alternative.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Then, US TikTok users are fleeing to another Chinese app ahead of its potential ban. It's Wednesday, January 15th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
One of the issues is that it's also a very localized app it's not just short form video it's something of a tech crunch describe it as a chinese yelp or a google alternative offering these hyper local recommendations in addition to the video feed and then also the It is a strictly censored app like most of the things coming out of China when it comes to the Internet.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Things like politics or socially sensitive topics like LGBTQ issues, even drugs on the app are not allowed. So you are seeing a lot of these Western users getting their accounts banned almost immediately. I saw people from TikTok trying to post their TikTok videos on the app. They were taken down because they had the TikTok watermark in them.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
So it is probably more of a meme than an actual one-for-one TikTok replacement.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Wenn sie in der Tat TikTok bannen, dann ist vielleicht Red Note nahe an seinen Hüften.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Vielen Dank. Und dann ist der US-Sieger-General nicht mit den Bourbon-Sales zu helfen. Er ist letztens rausgekommen und hat gesagt, Alkohol sollte Kanzer-Warn-Label tragen. Es kombiniert alles zusammen, bis man sieht, warum weniger Menschen Bourbon trinken, weniger Menschen in Amerika trinken, weil dieser Konflikt von einigen Faktoren ist.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
And then the final piece to this bourbon puzzle is the fact that makers of aged spirits have to almost live in the future. The key word there is AIDS. When they lay barrels down, they're making a bet on future demand.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
If you miscalculate, if you lay too many barrels, then five years, seven years, ten years down the line, you will be dealing with this supply gut, which is what we're experiencing right now. A lot of these makers laid these barrels in COVID when demand was booming. And now here they are. coming to maturity and suddenly no one wants to drink them.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
So it is a really complicated supply and demand balancing act that right now the industry is not walking very well.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Starbucks hat diese Woche eine neue Politik eröffnet, die uns für weniger Läutern und mehr Bestellungen ruft. Die Kaffee-Chain ist ihre 2018 dritte Platz-Policy in der Anwendung eines neuen Content-Codes in der Anwendung eines neuen Content-Codes in der Anwendung eines neuen Content-Codes
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Baristas are also empowered to request non-paying individuals to beat it and even get law enforcement involved if necessary. The policy shift comes as new CEO Brian Nickel works on revitalizing the struggling business with a focus on turning around the customer experience inside the cafes that is degraded in part due to a boom in mobile ordering. Despite the new policies, Starbucks insists that
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
They are still trying to create a welcoming environment, just one that prioritizes paying customers instead of anyone who drops in off the street. Neil, this is a pretty big vibe shift moment for Starbucks.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Because that is the center of this kind of tension is that Starbucks simultaneously does want to make the cafe a more inviting place. They're doing things by giving people who sit within the cafe and order in-store orders incentives to stay and sit for a while. Beginning at the end of January of this year, customers can get in. A free refill if it's served in a ceramic mug or a reusable glass.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Bis zum nächsten Mal. Es ist eine legitere Art und Weise, ein Live-Sport-Event zu sehen, ohne die Fotos zu zeigen. Ich glaube, es war nur eine Sache von Zeit, bis wir diesen digitalen Schlag der Hand sahen, um die Broadcast-Restriktionen umzusetzen. Aber wenn es einen neuen Publikum zu der Welt des Tennis bringt, dann all die Macht zu ihm. Ich werde dich hier auf den Spot legen, Neil.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
That used to only be for Starbucks loyalty program members, but now if you have a drink there and you're sitting there with that physical ceramic mug, they will give you a free refill to try to encourage this coffee house environment of just sitting and sipping on a coffee. It is funny, Neil, that you say you didn't know that you could pop into a Starbucks to go to the restroom.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
If you've ever been running around a city or had like an emergency bathroom break, the first thing you do is always you open Starbucks because you know that their bathrooms were available. So I'm glad you've never had an emergency.
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Americans Flock to TikTok Alternative & Bourbon Boom is Running Dry
Please do. Please do. Up next, don't go anywhere because Neil is going to talk about cottage cheese.
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I mean, I'm not even going to say that this is not a little bit impressive in order to create this fake LinkedIn profile to pose as an American job seeker, but where it gets to just the next level is that they make it to an interview stage and oftentimes they use deepfakes. So it's not even just like an AI generated LinkedIn profile.
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It's literally actively deepfaking you as you're on a interview stage and attempting to impersonate a person in real time. So this is very high level espionage right here. And then the next thing that they do too is oftentimes when you get hired, even as a remote worker, you get sent a company laptop.
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Oh, too soon. But that's what a lot of traditional marketing feels like. Brands are stuck on a delay, still operating on campaign calendars, while customers are living in the moment.
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And if you are a North Korean operative and you're not in America, you need kind of someone in America to receive that laptop and pretend you're logging in. I mean, we've talked about mouse jigglers, but these operations actually have laptop farms operated by American citizens where they
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And the feds have kind of come in and busted up to 70 laptops in one room with one person just going around and making the mouse look like it's active. So this has many layers to it. And you're right. It is an egg on the face moment for a lot of these companies who are hiring these fake employees.
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Then Airbnb is going through a midlife crisis, unveiling a new offering that goes beyond short-term rentals. It's Wednesday, May 14th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
The issue though, that even if you do suss out these workers, they usually are tech workers or IT workers, which means that they have been able to grant access to very sensitive systems within companies. So they've planted malware in them and then they extort them even after they've been fired because say, hey, I know you fired me. I know you found me out, but also I put a little bug in your code.
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If you want me to remove that, then you're going to have to pay me X amount of dollars. So they really are adaptive and they don't necessarily end their schemes once they've been caught. I mean, this is it's insane. It's we read the story and we're like, holy moly, even just the first sentence alone is just a crazy concept to wrap your head around.
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It meets every customer where they are and on their timeline, not yours. Email, SMS, push, you name it. Perfectly timed to be perfectly relevant.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Yeah, Saudi Arabia really rolled out the red carpet, or I really should say they rolled out the golden arches because the Saudi royal court brought in a custom McDonald's trailer just to honor Donald Trump's visit. Ronald McDonald is literally being used as a foreign policy tool at this point. But yes, this whole trip showcases Trump's willingness to embrace foreign dealmaking as president.
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and also how U.S. industry is hopping on board as well. The Trump administration said that they want to give the UAE an option to pursue their AI ambitions, and U.S. tech companies like Nvidia, like AMD, are planning to spend billion dollars to help fund those efforts as well.
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United Health Group, the largest healthcare company in the U.S., lost its CEO yesterday after Andrew Witte stepped down immediately from his role, citing personal reasons. He'd been at the helm since 2021 and been in the driver's seat as the company worked to navigate following the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last year.
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While not much else has been shared regarding Witte's decision, it has been a rough period for the company. Yesterday, United Health Group also suspended their financial outlook for the year,
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
film festival kicked off yesterday. And one thing you for sure won't be seeing is too much of the attendees. The French organizers dropped the hammer on people dropping their draws and banned nudity from the red carpet. The proclamation comes after sheer and new dresses have become all the rage while some like Kanye wife's wife, Bianca Sensori took things way too far at previous award shows.
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Want to sync up with your customers? Head to endthecampaign.com.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
The aim is not to regulate attire per se, but to perfect, prohibit full nudity on the red carpet in accordance with the institutional framework of the event and French law, the festival said. It also cut down on voluminous outfits and those large trains. So Neil, while you're planning your fit for next year, just avoid wearing too much
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excited for this because my favorite sandwich in the world is a Nutella peanut butter sandwich. So we'll see if I just can skip out one of those steps right there. But not only is Nutella just crushing it in America right now, peanuts are crushing it in America as well. Peanut consumption has doubled or it's peaked since the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly 60% of peanuts go towards peanut butter.
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So it's clearly a fan favorite. Actually, peanuts are responsible for 65% of all US nut consumption. So it really is just a confluence of factors right here. But I can't think of a product more situated directly in my wheelhouse than peanut-flavored Nutella.
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Yeah, it looks like this report highlighted two differing dynamics that are going on in the economy at the same time. Goods categories, which are things probably more exposed to tariffs like cars, apparel. They did see some of the price increases that some economists were expecting to come through the pipeline as of now.
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That also means that on the flip side, though, those goods didn't increase at the rate that a lot of people were expecting, which means that a lot of those retailers are absorbing the extra costs or they imported a bunch of products ahead of time. So it's probably a little combination of both.
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And then the other thing that this report revealed is that there's definitely some weakness in services categories. As you mentioned, those prices rose at a slower than expected rate. So categories like travel, recreation suggest that consumers are actually pulling back on some of those discretionary spending things like going on vacation, like leisure activities.
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So goods and services are telling two different stories right now.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
I know we keep saying that, but also don't listen to what we're saying. Listen to what companies are saying because Procter & Gamble, which is this big consumer goods company, said that they're probably going to start raising prices by July. Mattel, the maker of Barbie, also said they're going to need to raise prices on some of their toys to offset tariff costs.
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But on the other hand, you could look at tariffs almost like a sales tax of sorts. It makes everything more expensive, which actually means that people have less disposable income to spend on goods and services, which could eventually force businesses to lower their prices in order to generate sales. That's kind of a reliable economic impact of a sales tax.
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So if you look at tariffs in that vein, maybe it won't be as inflationary as you're expecting. But then on the other hand, if they remain very high and very broad, they could disrupt supply chains, and that could lead to shortages, which would actually end up driving up prices. So again, I feel like
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That's pretty impressive. That's what we're supposed to do. I'm supposed to give both pathways and then let you guys at home determine which one that you care about. Let's move on. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has been teasing a big announcement for the short-term rental giant all week. Yesterday, we found out it has nothing to do with lodging.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
In fact, it has something to do with a much more valuable commodity, time. Airbnb launched a redesign app that allows customers to book services like catering or personal training from vetted purveyors alongside its traditional home rentals. What if people monetize their biggest asset in their life, which is not their house, but their time, Chesky said yesterday.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Most of those time monetizers on the app fit into 10 categories, including things like personal chefs, photographers, masseuses, and even hair and makeup. While Airbnb mainly envisions these services as add-ons during your homestays, say you're in town for a wedding and want to bring the spa to you, you can also reserve anytime even without a vacation booked.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Chesky has previously said new business lines like services and experiences could generate over a billion dollars annually for the company as it looks to diversify its offerings to offset slowing growth in its core rentals business. Airbnb also recently lowered its second quarter revenue forecast due to weakening travel demand and intensifying competition from hotels.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Well, first of all, Jennifer Coolidge never lost her fastball. But how about this stat from Bloomberg's Lisa Abramowitz? The S&P 500 is now positive on the year after being down more than 15%. That is just the ninth time since World War II that the index has climbed out of a 10% plus hole before the year end, which I should remind you all that hole was created on April 8th.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
So it's trying to pull some different growth levers here. Neil, Brian Chesky framed this in a post on X as Airbnb's next chapter. Is this a chapter that you think is going to work for them?
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Brian Chesky, though, views it as rentals are just a service. So why do I need to stop in this pigeonhole of the rental market? He does think that that trust aspect that you mentioned is going to be a big differentiator for something like services because Airbnb has proved its bonafides in vetting things like hotels. homes where you go and stay on vacation.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
So if that level of trust is there, when you go to have an experience like a Eiffel Tower tour, you trust Airbnb because it served you well in the past. If you want a at-home chef, you trust them as well because they've served you well in other aspects of the curation.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
So that curation aspect is something that I think will separate it from other travel aggregators like Vietor or any of these other get your guide, these companies that provide a lot of experiences but don't necessarily vet them. They think that vetting process is what is going to make it different.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
ESPN has been teasing a new flagship streaming service for months now, and it's finally ready to unveil what it's been working on. Starting with the name, which are you ready for this? It's going to be called Sports Brew Daily. Nah, it's going to be called ESPN. Literally the same thing it's always been called. We kept coming back to our four letters, ESPN.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
The network's chairman, Jimmy Pataro, explained yesterday ESPN. There's power in our name, and there's trust in our name. Despite the unoriginal nomenclature, Disney execs think they've cooked up something that sports fans will love.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
The new service, which is coming out sometime before the NFL season, will be the first time you can access the entire suite of ESPN's networks from the American Cornhole League down to college football without a cable subscription. And given that, it's pretty pricey. As a standalone service, it will set you back $30 a month, or $36 if you bundle it with Disney Plus and Hulu's ad-supported tiers.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
As cord cutting accelerates, one of the only things keeping people tied to their cable subscriptions was live sports, but now a major domino has fallen. With ESPN giving sports lovers who don't have traditional cable subscriptions an outlet to watch, not a whole lot of reason to hang on to that subscription anymore.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
It's only May 14th right now, so it was quick. And if you want to get even crazier, it's just the fifth time we've erased a decline of over 15% by year's end. Again, it's May, which either means it's going to be a very long and crazy year, or the market's going to be up 1 million percent by December. Not financial advice. I don't know which one of those outcomes is going to come to fruition.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
But it is interesting, though, because Disney seems like it's trying to keep one foot in both the new world and the old world because you're right, old time TV networks are fading away, but they're also still profit centers for a company like Disney.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
So they are trying to assuage fears that they are ditching this cable subscription that is lucrative while also saying, hey, we're investing in the future with streaming like that as well. And it's definitely something that you can look at two ways. On the one hand, $30 per month for just ESPN may seem pretty hefty if you already have a cable subscription and these other subscriptions.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Or if you're paying $100 a month for your cable subscription and you really only watch sports on it, maybe you can save $70 by moving to this $30 a month fee. So it depends on where you're coming from, if that price seems too high or if it actually seems like you're saving a lot of money.
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Up next, we're going to talk about a crazy North Korean hacking scheme. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity. And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases.
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
Terms and more at applecard.com. Do you ever feel like you can feel yourself getting older?
Morning Brew Daily
Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, you know when you're watching what you thought was a live sporting event and someone next to you casually drops a spoiler from a minute ahead because they're checking social media?
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
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Airbnb Gets Into Luxury Lifestyle & ESPN's New Streaming App
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Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
Maybe Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, and Bill Burr.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
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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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
manufacturers that their input costs are going to be raised so much.
Morning Brew Daily
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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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
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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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
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.
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Southwest Scraps Free Checked Bags & Tariffs Hit Steel and Aluminum
gets its hands on those minerals. So a lot was at stake.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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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?
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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Musk v. Altman Gets Fiery & Coca-Cola’s Cash Cow is…Milk?
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. 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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
How confident are you that you're claiming every deduction you qualify for?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Trump Bumps China Tariffs to 104% & People Are Panic-Buying iPhones
It doesn't matter if you're running a solo side hustle or growing company with a team. TaxAct can help you find the write-offs you deserve.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion. Without them, we'd be lost, literally and figuratively. And here's the good news.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Wedding planning is stressful enough as is, but tariffs are making everything about 145% more stressful for brides-to-be. Despite a 90-day pause on most tariffs, most vendors have jacked up prices on everything from dresses to flowers in response to the expected import fees.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
One Reddit user shared how her custom-made wedding dress now costs $1,500 more than when she ordered it due to tariff-related charges. Other brides are trying to get ahead of any price rises by stocking up on candles and flower vases, even if their nuptials aren't until 2026 and beyond. Weddings really are ground zero for price hikes.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Not only are they running families on average $33,000, according to The Knot, But also, most of what makes a wedding feel like a wedding comes from foreign countries. About 90% of wedding dresses are manufactured in China, according to a VP of the National Bridal Retailers Association.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
So hopefully things don't get too crazy. But if I were you guys, maybe show up an extra hour or two early for your flights. Do you have your real ID? I do have my real ID. I didn't even notice it. I didn't know it until I Googled, how do you know? Got that little star in the upper right corner. So we're all good here.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Even mundane things like tablecloths and chairs are going up in price as vendors who order from overseas pass those fees on to customers. Neil, getting hitched, whew, is it expensive and getting even more so?
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Yeah. Some other ways that brides and grooms are pinching pennies is instead of French or Italian wines, you go to American wines. Instead of using roses, you opt for carnations instead. Professional videographers, very expensive. Just give your cousin an iPhone and let them cook. So people are being creative to solve these problems.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And I do think, I mean, I went to a wedding where a lot of the tableware, at least the candlesticks, were thrifted and it gave a very interesting and cool vibe to it as well. So it doesn't necessarily mean these things are worse if they are thrifted or secondhand like that.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
But I do think when you are seeing so many prices being passed on to consumers, I think we're going to see a rise in elopements. First of all, why even bother with all the expenses? And then the second thing that you can do is just pare down your guest list a lot, which no one really wants to do, but look for smaller weddings.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Yeah. And now they have an excuse to. That is a very good point. You get to know who your true friends are when the tariffs, you know, influence costs so much that, you know, you know what? We don't need my sorority sisters from college.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And now a word from our sponsor, Planet O. Neil, you know how sometimes the best part of the day is the smallest thing?
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Mattel CEO is not bullish on toy manufacturing returning to the U.S., despite the massive tariffs imposed on Chinese imports. The head of the Barbie maker went on CNBC yesterday and threw cold water on the idea of that toys can ever be made in USA. We don't see that happening, he said, a day after pulling his company's annual financial targets.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
He emphasized that while critical functions like design and engineering do take place and will remain in the US, manufacturing will continue to be outsourced because one, it enables Mattel to offer their products at an affordable price. And by the end of 2025, less than 40% of Mattel's products
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
will be sourced from China with a goal to reduce that to below 25% within two years, but the company will still not shift that production to the U.S. The end result is not exactly a Barbie dream house for American consumers who should expect higher toy prices from one of the world's biggest toy makers.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Exactly. Tiny wins. Wait, you found $100? I found a penny. Anyways, for me lately, it's been Planet O and my morning coffee.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Yeah, there is this big turnaround plan from a new CEO that tried to lean into telehealth coming out of the pandemic. That just didn't really work. It was too big of a change from, you know, the in-person meetings and the portion control that Weight Watchers was known for.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And then obviously Ozempic was a big hit to the business as well, even though they tried to jump on that train just a little too little, little too late. But yeah, I do think Oprah...
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
who was Weight Watchers for a lot of people in a lot of people's minds, going on and saying that, hey, not only am I leaving the board, but also that she had used an unnamed weight loss drug to augment some of her weight loss. That was probably the beginning of the end for this once iconic company.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
For over a decade, travelers to the Wellington Airport in New Zealand looked to the sky to be greeted by a fantastical sight. Two giant eagles straight from Lord of the Rings hanging from the terminal ceiling with one even carrying Gandalf on its back. These things are huge with wingspans reaching over 50 feet and weighing in at a ton each.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Travelers have passed under their watchful gaze for 13 years now, but this month, the giant eagles will depart the terminal for good with the airport CEO saying, It's been quite a Lord of the Rings-heavy storytelling theme here. Now we're looking to change that to something new.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
It breaks my heart, one traveler responded, but it's not like the citizens of Middle Earth, I mean New Zealand, will be totally without their Lord of the Rings imagery. A giant sculpture of smog will still watch menacingly over the Czech encounters, Neil.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Counterpoint, giant eagles are always going to be awesome. They're never going to go out of style. Although they did fall from the ceiling during an earthquake. And again, these things weigh a ton each. So I could see maybe the safety concerns being a bigger issue. That's not why they did it.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
You did. But did I mention Planet Oat is not just for coffee? It also hits in cereal, smoothies, even straight from the glass. It's like the utility player of your fridge.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
One very interesting detail that Politico Europe reported is that Cardinals have been watching Conclave the movie for guidance on how to actually carry out a conclave in real life. That's because... The vast majority of the Cardinals were actually appointed by Pope Francis. So they haven't been really around long enough to know how this whole process works.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
So that is just fascinating that just like us, they too were sitting down and watching Conclave. As for the contenders, how can you not root for Pierre-Baptiste Pizzabala? The internet has a rally behind him simply because they want to say his name. I mean, come on, Pope Pizzabala is funny. Well, he'll change it. I know, but no, his last name will still be Pizzabala though.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
So he'll change his first name, but Pizzabala will still be there. But I just think if the universe bends towards having the most funny outcome, then of course Pope Pizzabala is a lock.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Okay, you are definitely buying lunch today. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Yeah, despite this relatively chummy meeting, you are right that the U.S. and Canada are not jumping back into bed with each other to do business because think about business owners. They want things like stability. Banks want stability if they're lending money. Private equity firms want stability. And what do we not have right now between the U.S. and Canada when it comes to trade relations?
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Stability. Canada is looking at kind of their dependence on the U.S. and reevaluating here because right now Canada depends on the U.S. for 75% of its exports. That is a huge number. Obviously, their manufacturing sector ships 42% of its output to the U.S. as well. So now you're seeing companies kind of reevaluate and say, hey, where are other customers? Can we look to you?
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Asian markets potentially to replace the U.S.? Can we focus on distributing not exclusively to this one market that's typically made up most of our sales? Can we reduce the amount of sales coming in for the U.S.? So you are just seeing this kind of re-evaluation when it comes to who we're relying on for trade partners if you are a Canadian business.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And if we look even smaller at just tiny border towns in Washington that rely on a lot of Canadian tourists to survive, they're seeing a lot of pain there as well. One grocery store said that we've seen sales drop 30% because no one's coming into the US anymore. And then this was a very funny detail from a Bloomberg report. There is a rubber duck museum that used to be located in the US.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And again, most of its customers came from Canada, but they relocated over the border because they could dodge some of the tariffs on Chinese goods because a lot of the rubber ducks were sourced from China. So again, that's a very small scale example, but it just shows you how this decoupling has affected everyone from very large businesses to rubber duck museums.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Then a terrifying, flesh-eating fly species is coming for America's cattle. It's Wednesday, May 7th. Let's ride.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Maybe they just don't have real ideas. No, they have their passwords. DoorDash reported earnings yesterday that exceeded expectations and did what any of us would do when we're feeling ourselves a little. Go shopping. The U.S. delivery company announced two major acquisitions yesterday, showing it's got more global ambitions than shuttling a burrito in a private chariot to your doorstep.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
The first announcement was an agreement to buy the London-based delivery company Deliveroo for just under $4 billion. Then hours later, it snapped up the hospitality tech company Seven Rooms for $1.2 billion. DoorDash's vision is to break out of a U.S. market that it has essentially taken over, having already won about two-thirds of the domestic food delivery space. With Deliveroo in the fold,
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
DoorDash's reach expands to over 40 countries and a combined 50 million monthly active users, establishing it as the biggest player in the global market as well. Speaking of the global market, a main DoorDash competitor also did a little shopping of its own yesterday with Uber buying a controlling stake in the Turkish delivery app Trendyol Go.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
It all adds up to an industry that is in its consolidation era after a slowdown from pandemic era highs, clearing the way for a lead.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And some companies that you mentioned are even expanding, launching into new markets. Instacart was one that you mentioned. They just launched a new drinks and snack delivery app called Fizz. This is a alcohol and snack delivery specific app that allows you to actually split the cost amongst your friends if you're hosting a party. So
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Instead of just having one person buy all the alcohol and then vending them later, they think that you should do that within their app called Fizz because they said young people love doing this. It used to be in the olden days like the host would determine the menu, determine what people are drinking, and bear a lot of the cost.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Now millennials and Gen Z, they want to spread it across their friends. Everyone wants a say in what they're actually going to be eating and drinking. So they launched a standalone app there. So you're right. It's another data point that some of these delivery companies are saying, okay, We are seeing not only that we're doing fine right now, but opportunities for expansion into new markets.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
I am nervous to the point of being scared. Neil, these things are called flying piranhas because they descend upon livestock. They lay their larvae and their larvae literally eat their way out from the inside. Do not Google this. Do not Google image search this because it is as gross as it sounds. But yeah, back in the 1930s, scientists did have this major breakthrough.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
We're like, wait, we can sterilize these flies. It can really keep down populations and hurt the ability of them to reproduce. And by 1950s, they were using literal airplanes to drop millions upon millions of these sterilized flies per week over infected areas, which obviously did wonders to keeping these in check.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And we actually did set up a factory to produce these things alongside the Panama government in the narrowest part of Central America. That's been the most fascinating thing is that these flies cannot travel over water.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
So we literally went to the narrowest landmass we could find, set up a production factory that can pump out millions upon millions of these sterilized screw worms every single week and use that to kind of control outbreaks as they happen. But
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
As with most things in life, as you get further and further away from that initial fear, which was decimating the cattle industry all those years ago, people kind of forgot about it. A lot of veterinarians don't even know how to identify screwworms anymore, which is why it's creeping back into the lexicon and into the agricultural industry.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
We just forgot that it was a problem because these sterilization efforts were so successful. But yeah, I am with the USDA official. I am a little bit nervous myself.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
And not to make you even more freaked out, but the parasite does thrive in warmer weather. What else is coming up? Summer. So if that doesn't make you more nervous, the hot weather could lead to an infestation that kind of runs unchecked. And by the way, this would impact American consumers because again, Cattle supplies, they've been tight for a while now.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Hey, I've been getting away with using my Costco card at the airport for the last few years, so I really gotta get on it. Hopefully it doesn't add to the craziness that is already happening at airports like Newark due to the air traffic controller issues. The Department of Homeland Security did say that 81% of travelers already have real IDs or are compliant with real IDs.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
So any damages to American cattle herds would drive up the cost of beef. And it is one of those situations that we saw with the avian flu and affecting egg prices. Similar things could happen with screw worms and beef prices.
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DoorDash Ups Delivery Reign with $5B Deals & Tariffs Hurt Weddings?
Thanks for leaving us on a positive note there, Neil. Up next, we're gonna talk about weddings. Tasty Trade puts traders first. At Tasty Trade, you can explore the opportunities to make smarter moves.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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,
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Americans Won’t Quit... Their Jobs & Spotify Has First Profitable Year, Ever
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
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Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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World Braces for Trump's Tariffs & Practice Flirting with Tinder’s AI
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
I do want to drill a little deeper on something you just said, which is like the financialization of our world. One of the byproducts of that is just this explosion in the availability and ubiquity of personal debt, student loans, car loans, credit cards, mortgages. These are all things that our listeners are no doubt very familiar with.
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
How does that fit into and shape, in your opinion, just like the current economic landscape that we find ourselves in right now?
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Shifting gears deeper into the Katie-verse, actually, because the Katie-verse is sprawling. You are writing a book right now. First, tell us what it's about and then why someone might be interested in reading it.
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
It's coming down the pipeline.
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Speaking of something we talked about earlier in the show, how has the time management aspect been of trying to juggle everything you do with writing this seemingly, it sounds amazing book?
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Yeah. Rent versus buy is a debate that has been debated a lot. And I'm sure a lot of people listening have had that debate. Can you take us through and take them through some factors they should be considering when weighing renting versus buying?
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
I've never been either. Oh, man.
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
I like that. Resolution to have no resolutions. That is all the time we have. Katie, we could talk to you all day. Thank you so much for jumping on the show. Every time you come on the show, you leave Neil, myself, and everyone listening with just a head full of new ideas to mull over. If you want more Katie in your life, she has an incredible podcast. It's called Money with Katie.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
You can also head to moneywithkatie.com to check out her wealth planner, read her writing, and follow her on social. We will link everything in the show notes as well. We cannot wait for this book to come out, Katie. You've done a great job getting it across the finish line. And we can't wait to have you on the show again sometime soon. And Happy New Year.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Well, let's talk about getting intimate with your numbers as you just described it. You have this product, it's called the Money With Katie Wealth Planner. It is this prodigious spreadsheet that I've played around with. It's incredibly impressive to just even look at. Why is it important for someone to have a tool like that when it comes to managing their finances?
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
I think that's a perfect lead into this next question. You got your start writing about personal finance, and part of that messaging was how to achieve FIRE, which is financial independence, retire early.
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
For someone who is listening who is working maybe a corporate job right now, what is something you'd tell them as we enter into this new year that could set them on this path towards financial freedom, towards FIRE?
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Kansas and Alaska. Not a lot of things tying those two together would be a very long road trip as well. Maybe you have to take a cruise up to Alaska. Could be a fun winter holiday thing to do. My New Year's resolution. So last year, I tried to run every single day. I made it about two and a half months in and then got injured, so I'm going to aim a little lower this year.
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2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
I think my goal is to just do my first Ironman triathlon. I've done a couple marathons. I think Ironman is the next step. Speaking of the new year, we're very excited for you all to hear this episode. Katie is one of our favorite people here at Morning Brew. She hosts the Money with Katie podcast and is one of the best personal finance thinkers and writers out there in the game right now.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Don't worry. Money with Katie is here to put you on the path to success. It's Wednesday, January 1st. Let's ride. Neil, happy New Year's. Going to put you on the spot. What is your New Year's resolution for 2025?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Investing, Renting vs Buying, $$$ Planning with ‘Money with Katie’
Let's shift gears a little bit and talk about time management. You've discussed this need to create these neat time blocked chunks of the day for yourself, even bringing in ideas like industrial capitalism to describe just how regimented your days had become. Take us through, though, how your relationship with time has changed and evolved as you've kind of grown into yourself.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Do you see crypto carrying all this momentum into 2025 and beyond, or is it going to get maybe a rude awakening?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
And don't go anywhere. We'll be right back after this break.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
So what are some downstream effects? Take our listeners through some downstream effects. If we do actually enter next year in the years following with higher for longer interest rates, what might happen or what are some effects that will broaden out from that?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Eine Sache, die du vorhin auch erwähnt hast, ist, dass fallende Rates bedeuten, dass Cash-Accounts oder Geldmarkt-Funds nicht so populär werden, weil sie früher 5,5% hielten. Jetzt klingelt das herunter. Jeden Tag bekommen wir eine E-Mail, die sagt, dass die Hälfte heruntergeht. Was denkst du, was die Auswirkungen davon sind?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Wer sind vielleicht die Gewinner und Verlierer dieser Hälfte, die etwas weniger süß sind?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
And define what you mean by activists in this context.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
So one person you did mention is the new CEO of Starbucks, which is Brian Nickell. He's been described by some analysts as the LeBron James, the Tom Brady of the restaurant industry. Do you think that he has the ability to steer Starbucks in the right direction?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Starbucks befindet sich in vielen Wettbewerben, in China ist die Vergrößerung sehr niedrig, aber wie viel kann ein Geschäftsführer oder ein CEO wirklich verändern, die Rechte einer Firma, oder ist es mehr so, dass die strukturellen Probleme das sind, was sie sind und sie nur so viel tun können?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Neil ist ein Aktivist-Investor. Ja, genau.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Sie zahlen dir 100 Millionen. Aber du persönlich. Wenn du mir 100 Millionen zahlst, ehrlich gesagt, Nike ist wahrscheinlich der eine, weil, ich meine, es heißt, wie ein Hund, der das Produkt füttert. Du gehst und testest das Produkt. Ich habe wahrscheinlich Nike mein ganzes Leben lang gewonnen und Fußball auch. Also das ist definitiv eine Firma, die ich fühle,
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
I would want to have the chance to, just because I do love their products and have tried them out. So I think Nike is one that I could, just give me the reins, people. We could turn this puppy around.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Well, I think they have a huge opportunity to regain their market share of the running market. I mean, Nike was like the thing that brought running back. to, or like, basically help create the running boom in America, but then they've lost their way. They have, these run clubs don't interact with Nike anymore. They've pulled back out of a lot of these wholesalers.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
So I think there's a huge opportunity there for them to get back in touch with their roots and just say like, hey runners, we see you again. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there, even, and I'm not so worried about like the underarmors of the word like that, because they don't have like the heritage that Nike does.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
So that's why, I mean, you put me on the spot, but that is genuinely probably the position I'd like to be in. Guck dir das an. Wir sind alle CEOs in diesen Tagen. Du und ich, Anne. Wir werden die Dinge umdrehen. Wir werden den Show beenden mit einigen Rapport-Fragen. Diese sind die Gammel. Und wir werden dich ein bisschen spekulieren.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Keiner von diesen Fragen ist finanzielles Hinweis, aber wir werden dich hier auf den Spot legen. Bist du bereit, diese Rapport-Fragen zu rippen?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Alright, first question. Which of these private companies will go public first this year in your opinion? SpaceX, Stripe, Klarna, Coreweave or StubHub?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Because you've had insight into, you've talked to some of these buy now, pay later CEOs and you think that it's just time for them?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Kind of on the same question, do you think TikTok will actually be banned? It's been rumored for a long time. Do you think that will come through in 2025? I do not.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
I love that answer, too, because we have talked about the rise of vintage clothing this past year, so I do think some of these vintage sites will... Yeah, the RealReal. Yeah, the RealReal, Shopbop, these do have an audience, so I love that answer.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
That's what I say to them. We just needed to give you a little time. You have one. This won't take you a lot of time. What's your favorite ticker symbol?
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
What is Harley Davison's hog? H-O-G. That's a pretty good one there too as well. Warum haben sie es als Hügel genannt? Weil sie es Hügel nennen. Ich weiß nicht, warum nennen sie Motorräder Hügel? Das ist das, was sie nennen.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
I'd hire you as a spokesperson right there. That makes me want to move to New York.
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
And I already live here. Yeah. All right. Best book to learn about investing. If I'm a listener listening to this, what is one book you would tell me to read?
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2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Das ist meine falsche Antwort. Das ist eine tolle Antwort und ich habe noch meinen englischen Lehrer aus der Hochschule, also vielleicht würde ich Mr. Flanagan hinschauen. I know you remember yours as well. That is all the time we have today. Anne, thank you so much for hopping on the show. Everyone, make sure you follow Bruin Markets on social media.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
You'll see Anne dropping some knowledge on their Instagram and TikTok. Also listen to After Earnings to hear Anne chopping it up with some of the biggest executives in business. Anne, it was a pleasure and I hope you have a happy 2025.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Let's dive into some of the sectors though that could be most affected. Sectors of the economy like the auto market. A lot of auto imports come from Mexico and China. Same thing with fruits and vegetables. A lot of imports come from Mexico. Meat and dairy coming in from Canada as well.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
I guess my follow-up though is, are there any specific investment opportunities that actually might arise as a result of these policy changes rather than just sectors that could be impacted by the tariffs?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
We broke it down with investing expert Anne Barry. It's Tuesday, December 31st. Let's ride!
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Let's just broaden the scope here a little bit and talk about BRICS nations, which are those nations that include Brazil and Russia. They've expressed some interest in actually potentially moving away from the US dollar, which caused Trump to float this idea of levying tariffs against those nations as well.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Do you see these tariff wars having some downstream effects, like potentially this pushback against the US dollars, like hegemony over the global financial system?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Are you thinking that widespread about the potential impacts from Trump's tariff war?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Ja, und dann letztendlich, nur spezifisch auf die Märkte zu schauen, sind es irgendwelche Firmen, die du denkst, haben diese Periode vor der Trump-Administration sehr gut navigiert? Eine Firma, die mir kommt, ist Walmart. Sie sagen, dass zwei Drittel ihrer Items in den USA hergestellt werden, versus eine Firma wie Target, die ein bisschen mehr... die von Mexiko, China usw. importiert werden.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Gibt es irgendwelche Namen, bei denen Sie sagen können, sie haben ihre Ducks in einer Reihe hier, sie denken, sie werden den Sturm ziemlich gut überwinden?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Wow, favorite memory from 2024. It's got to be that 3-wood I hit on 18. 265 uphill carry. No, I'm just kidding. Probably it is related to the podcast. Seeing Spotify Rap come out recently, that was a highlight. Doing the in-person trivia night we hosted in New York, that was a highlight. Too many to choose from, so I'm just going to say my favorite memory is doing the podcast every day with you.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Let's move on to our next category. So every year there's this bank called Saxo Bank that releases this annual list it calls outrageous predictions, where it picks a few events that, while unlikely, could potentially happen. One of those predictions is that NVIDIA will balloon to twice the value of Apple in 2025.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Some of the rationale behind that prediction, NVIDIA has this next-gen Blackwell chip in the pipeline that represents this 25-fold increase in performance compared to its existing lineup. There also seems to be no signs that the AR arms race going on in big tech is slowing down. Companies like Meta, Google, Open Air are all vying against each other for these all-important NVIDIA chips.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Those tailwinds have turned NVIDIA into this bell of the stock market ball. It's up over 180% in 2024. But Anne, I'm curious to get your thoughts. Is NVIDIA going to continue to capture more of this AI market? Or are some of the headwinds, maybe regulatory scrutiny, going to slow it down as we enter 2020?
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
To help, we had a chat with the incredible Anne Barry, the host of the Brews' markets-focused podcast, After Earnings. Okay, Anne, thanks so much for joining us.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Das war ein perfekter Einfluss auf meine nächste Frage. Du hast vorhin Salesforce-CEO Marc Benioff interviewt. Du hast seinen Anspruch auf AI bekommen. Und du hast ihn direkt gefragt, ob der AI-Markt in einer jetzigen Bubble ist. Zeig uns, was er als CEO von Salesforce gesagt hat, als CEO einer Firma, die viel auf AI bettet.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
And it's totally okay. Last year there was something called the Inverse Tobii Index, where everything I predicted that was going to happen the next year, the reverse ended up happening. Oh, wow. I'm right there with you.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Market Predictions: Tariff Impact, Crypto, Mega-Mergers and More
Ich weiß, die Inverse, Jim Cramer. Die Inverse. Die Inverse, Jim Cramer. Die Inverse, Jim Cramer. Die Inverse, Jim Cramer. Die Inverse, Jim Cramer. Part of the reason behind all this frothiness and the record highs is this perception that the incoming Trump administration, particularly his pick for the chair of the SEC, Paul Atkins, are much more crypto-friendly than past administrations.
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Tell me, Neil, as one of the sweatier men I know. Excuse me? Let me finish. As one of the sweatier men I know, have you considered trying Mizzen and Mane's performance fabric dress shirts?
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Their dress shirts are machine washable and wrinkle resistant, so you can wear them every day.
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So don't sweat it when it comes to comfort.
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
A new side hustle just dropped, and it's got four walls, a low barrier of entry, and is particularly resilient to an economic downturn. It's podcasting. No, it's mobile home flipping, and it's the next Toby's Trend that I want to tell you about. Mobile home flipping has always been a slightly unsexy sector of the real estate market, but it works just like its sexier counterparts.
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Investors shop around looking for a slightly rundown structure that they can buy for a good deal, then put a little work into, and then turn around to sell them hopefully for a profit. It's far more approachable than flipping more traditional homes, mainly because of the price. Mobile homes are cheap, largely because the price doesn't include the land itself, just the structure.
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So send this to your friends, your family, to your shorty, and let's go win MBD a shorty award. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you ever use one of those pens that just glides across the page?
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Plus, they are typically factory built, which means that mass production in economies of scale can keep prices reasonable. Then you factor in demand that is through the roof and supply that can't keep up, and you have a recipe for high occupancy, and accelerating rents, aka exactly what home flippers are looking for.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Neil, over the last decade, the number of new manufactured homes shipped across the country increased by over 60%, according to U.S. Census data reviewed by Business Insider. And mobile homes are now the country's biggest source of unsubsidized low-income housing. So these are a critical part of the housing market that is clogged by limited supply and skyrocketing prices.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
It was only a matter of time before it also became a lucrative part of the real estate sector as well.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Then 60 Minutes spent a few of its minutes calling out its corporate owner as tensions rise ahead of a multi-billion dollar merger. It's Tuesday, April 29th. Let's ride.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
One other quirk of mobile home real estate is that they're typically classified as personal property. So that's something like a car, not necessarily a house. So you get lower property taxes, lower insurance costs. But that also usually meant that they depreciated like cars. When you drive a car off a lot, it loses a lot of its value.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So that doesn't necessarily seem like a good asset to own if it's depreciating. But now that has been changing because of the current housing market in the United States. The price of mobile homes has jumped by almost 60% from 2018 to 2023. So that is actually appreciating exactly like a home now.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So that's what's brought these new investors in, what's brought institutional investors in as well, because they are being valued like homes, even though they are not necessarily fully baked out homes.
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
And they also kind of exist in sort of this alternate reality where you can go and close on them in a day. You don't need to bring in an attorney. You don't need to bring in an appraiser. You can just get the home, buy it much more cheaply and much more quickly than another home. So it fills a very important niche.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
And now you're seeing other bigger investors look at it as a money-making operation, not just a way to provide affordable housing for a big chunk of the population.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Well, I can't find that pen, but that feeling, that's what Planet Oat does for your kitchen. It's a smooth, satisfying go-to, the kind of breakfast addition that makes everything better.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Yeah, if you go back to the polymarket chart of this election, it is insane. In January, Polivare, which was the conservative candidate, was in the mid to high 90% to win. Carney wasn't even a name that voters knew, but a lot changed over that period. Yes, clearly the anti-Trump push, as well as his reputation as this good financial steward.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
I mean, this dude has the highest financial bona fides you can have, ran the Bank of Canada, ran the Bank of England. So those two together just kind of turned this election on its head. So quickly, and I encourage you to go look at those prediction markets charts because it is just this massive jump for a guy, Carney, who some people didn't even recognize his face as recently as January.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Now he is the PM of Canada. Citizens of Portugal and Spain got a longer siesta than they bargained for on Monday after huge power outages plunged large parts of the two countries into blackouts. There's still no official explanation for what caused the massive outages, but the results were acutely felt. Traffic lights were out in Lisbon, planes were stuck,
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Trains weren't moving, and even American tennis player Coco Gauff got swept up in the outages, with an IG story of hers showing the moment the lights went dark in the locker room of the Madrid Open, the tennis tournament where she was playing.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Neil, some officials are floating the possibility that the outage was caused by a massive cyber attack, but right now there is still no official explanation. Power is slowly coming back online, but restoring Spain's power network could take up to 10 hours, the grid operator has warned. Wild scenes out there.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
And here's the kicker. If you go with unsweetened, it's got zero grams of sugar, still smooth, still delicious. Plus it's dairy-free, soy-free, gluten-free, and peanut-free.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Yeah, a lot less singing, too. The big question is whether it's too late for Amazon to take on SpaceX, mainly because of just the cost. Just setting up this first generation of 3,200 satellites could cost as much as $17 billion worldwide. upfront, that's according to a report from Raymond James.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
And so even if they do start to turn this into a profitable enterprise, it still could cost $1 billion to $2 billion per year to just maintain. And does that make sense when there already is such a big market leader in SpaceX? That is the calculus that Amazon is weighing right now. They think it can open up a bigger market for its Amazon Web Services user base.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So clearly, they think the calculus is in their favor. But right now, they definitely have some ground to make up. Finally, if you thought your phone addiction was bad, at least it's not. Climb Mount Fuji, lose your phone, get stuck, get rescued, then go back for your phone four days later, get stuck again, get rescued again. Bad.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
That's what happened to a 27-year-old university student who climbed the mountain outside of its official climbing season last Tuesday, and after a lost crampon, led to his first rescue by helicopter. But after just four days with no phone, he decided... You know what?
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
I'd rather risk it again rather than be confronted with my own boredom, or worse, a flip phone, and set off again to go retrieve his things. One bout of altitude sickness later, and he was back in a rescue helicopter. Neil, maybe the worst part of this, other than the waste of rescue resources, is the fact that news outlets are reporting it's unclear if he actually got the device or not.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
You gotta get the phone if you go through that much trouble.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Time to reach for the good pen. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Well, I'm imagining it like slipped out of his pocket when he fell or something like that. But I do like that you are a big phone wallet keys guy. You never leave home without it.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Yeah, it's getting real quiet on the port front on ships coming in from China to the US. And the reason why these effects aren't going to be manifested necessarily is a lot of companies have been stocking up. They kind of saw this coming. So they've been building up inventories. But when
Morning Brew Daily
Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
you really might start to feel it is when they start needing to restock ahead of the busy holiday shopping season. But empty shelves is something that Americans are not necessarily used to seeing outside of COVID, outside of these supply chain snarls. So it is definitely why this research note caused so many alarm bells to go off because
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
The words American empty shelves just don't even really jive with each other. And the issue is that there's not necessarily a non-rocky path forward because if you start to relieve these tariffs and if all these goods start to pour into the U.S., the ports can't sustain that either. So it's not necessarily like as soon as the tariffs are off, suddenly these supply chain issues are sorted out.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
It's going to get worse before it gets better.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
I will tell you what, a seven-hour transatlantic flight post-marathon leads to soreness levels I have never experienced. But the experience itself, awesome. I ran... the New York Marathon last year, and the fans in London might be even rowdier, maybe because they are a couple pints deep by that point, more so than their American counterparts. Also, way more costumed runners.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
And then this viral deck from Apollo economist Slock also pointed out other areas of weakness in the U.S. economy. He looked at earnings revisions, which have been coming in fast and hot, inbound tourism, which is decreasing, and then consumer confidence also tanking. So it wasn't just shipping, although he was looking very deeply into that. This guy put a lot of effort into this.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
He was looking at satellite images of US trade in the South China Sea, just seeing what ships are leaving and what ships are coming in. And that's where he got a lot of data from as well. So again, you framed this by saying, what are the tangible impacts of the trade war? It's looking like they are finally being felt
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
And then eventually will manifest in empty shelves, potentially, if this isn't worked out before.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Yeah, what drama. I mean, ostensibly on the surface, the FCC review should be completely unrelated to Trump's complaint. But a lot of people are reading between the lines and saying, yeah, the company believes the approval is contingent upon reaching this settlement.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So, of course, Sherry Redstone, who stands to benefit monetarily, she would net $2.4 billion for this sale, is going like, guys, let's not screw this up. Tell me what you're going to say about Trump in your next stories. Her frustrations started growing over CBS's reports on Greenland and then the Ukraine war as well.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
I saw a guy dressed as Big Ben, Wonder Woman, a shark, the king, the queen, and I was in a corral with a guy wearing a full three-piece Peaky Blinders-esque suit, and all he said to me was, gonna be a hot one out there. He beat me, by the way. He passed me at like mile 22. I was like, oh no. But yes, great time. Loved every step, even if I didn't run it as fast as I wanted to.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
So she tried to start to meddle with 60 Minutes' editorial authority, which caused all this tension within the newsroom. So Redstone has been trying to exit as her position as a media mogul. And yet these last few yards to get it to the finish line have just been
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Yeah, Nathan Fielder did it in the way only Nathan Fielder can. He did stop at the end of it and go, this is real, by the way, what is happening to him. So you are right that things just got so cloudy for Paramount as they're trying to complete this merger. which, again, it is to Larry Ellison's son. So technically, Larry Ellison is a big Trump supporter.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
You would think that the blessing would get signed off, but, you know, all this editorial back and forth is leaving this $8 billion jail in jeopardy. The Washington Commanders are pulling an UNO reverse card and returning to their home from a bygone era. The NFL franchise is packing up its home for the last 12 months,
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
27 years in Landover, Maryland, and putting down roots in the nation's capital, unveiling plans for a new $3.7 billion development on the site of the old RFK Stadium, the place the franchise played its ball for more than three decades prior to 1997. The new stadium plans still need to be approved by the city council, but the way has been paved by a bipartisan bill
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
that transferred the RFK Stadium land to D.C. after some lobbying on Capitol Hill by new owner Josh Harris and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell late last year. The stadium itself hopes to be more than a stadium. The plans include a plaza district focused on entertainment, a riverfront district featuring housing, retail, and dining, as well as a new residential neighborhood.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
On that note of competition, though, I do hear that MBD is up for a little award.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
But maybe the biggest inclusion is that of a humble roof. Harris said that he was torn about including one because he grew up watching the Commanders play outdoors, but a roof is a golden ticket towards hosting other big events like concerts or eventually a Super Bowl. Taylor Swift, pick an event, pick an act, Harris said at a press conference yesterday.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Neil, this stadium to be still has some hurdles to navigate. While the commanders are pledging to shell out $2.7 billion for the new development, which would be the single largest private investment in D.C. 's history, taxpayers would still be on the hook for $1 billion. So there might be some pushback to directing that amount of public funds towards a new stadium.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
That's definitely how Josh Harris and the mayor of D.C. is framing this project, is that it will bring jobs, will bring economic activity, which is usually the argument that most NFL owners bring when they're trying to make a new stadium. How are they going to fund the public portion of the deal, though?
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Officials want to finance that $1 billion by extending the ballpark fee, which was this tax on businesses earning more than $5 billion that they put in place to fund construction bonds for the nationals at park.com. the MLB franchise in D.C., but now they're trying to rebrand that ballpark fee as a sports facilities fee and ask businesses to continue to pay that.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
Neil is right. They are kind of like the Oscars, but for digital and social media content and brands. I didn't win a medal over in London, but you can help us and our whole team win some hardware by heading to vote at the link in the podcast description. Voting closes tomorrow night at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, not London time, Eastern Standard.
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Shipping Industry's Warning on Supply Chains & ‘60 Minutes’ vs. Paramount
That was supposed to expire in 2026, but now they're just saying, hey, we got a new stadium, guys. You mind tossing us a few more of your tax dollars? So that is a sticking point here, though, because if you're a business and you expected this tax to go away, now they're saying that we want you to continue it. That might be something that the city council kind of pushes back on.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
With pricing designed for serious traders, it's no surprise their platform was named Investopedia's Best Overall for Options Trading in 2024.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
as the Kentucky game winded down saying please pleading with the student section do not storm the court because she knew that the fine was coming she was overheard saying we could use this money for NIL just stay in your seats and then the fans obviously did not take heed they did storm the court and the worst part of this is Vanderbilt has to pay $500,000 to Kentucky to
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
I tell you what, Neil, I feel bad for all the roses out there because no one is stopping to smell them. Pedestrians in big cities are walking way faster and socializing way less, and I want to talk about our constant need to be in a rush on today's edition of Toby's Trends.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
A recent study out of the National Bureau of Economic Research compared the walking habits of pedestrians in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia from 1980 to 2010. And turns out, we're all walking like our hair is on fire. Video footage shows that people moved an average of 15% faster in 2010 than 2010. 30 years prior.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
People are also less prone to just hanging out as lingering and loitering in public spaces was down by about half over that same period. So why are we zooming around all the time? Cell phones have a lot to do with it. 80% of American adults had a cell phone by 2010, contributing to a lack of sidewalk small talk.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Plus, people in the observed areas saw their average incomes rise, so rising opportunity costs of strolling and chatting may deter people from slowing their roll. Neil, I will be the first to admit, I am fully part of the fast-walking epidemic, but it looks like I am not alone.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
And then what is the antidote to this? Some urbanists were kind of putting forth some ideas of how you can get people to slow down. Making street spaces that are inviting to walkers is one of the easiest things you can do. That means probably more green space, more shade, more seating.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Also, potentially, New York just rolled out these anti-congestion or these congestion laws that tax cars for entering the city. If you constrain automobiles coming around, that might make streets a more lovely place to walk. But even if you do slow or eliminate vehicular traffic, It only does so much. They actually looked at Boston's downtown crossing.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
That's been car-free since 1978, which predates this study. But they found that social engagements are still down there from 1980 to 2010. One of the things they pointed out is they took away a lot of benches, so maybe less people are lingering there. But there is some implications to the fact that sidewalks are becoming just thoroughfares and not places to bump into people and hang out. So
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Let this be a lesson to you. Maybe if you're listening to this, take the headphone out, say hello to your fellow neighbor, maybe stop and chat a little bit.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
They're one of their main rivals, one of the richest teams in the SEC. So that money is going straight into the pocket of your chief rival there. Act like you've been there before. Vanderbilt, though, congrats, 16-4. Pretty good season they're putting together. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, it was a red day in the market yesterday.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Like I just want to get, I'm actually known for running around the city too, because if I can get there in three minutes instead of eight minutes, I'm going to do that. So I am part of the problem.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Yeah, I think what is kind of confusing people is just the sheer scope of the order. Grants affect so many different people and so many different industries across the government. I mean, they go out to universities for education, universities for research purposes, also to nonprofits for education. healthcare and doing other studies, thousands of other purposes.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
So that's what has people kind of scratching their heads. Technically, this is just a pause, just a re they want to look at where all this money is going with the kind of under the guise of reducing federal spending. But it does leave a lot of question marks because just the sheer amount of people that it affects.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia made history yesterday by voting to form the first union in the Amazon-owned grocery chain's history. The employees are looking for improved wages, benefits, and working conditions, specifically calling out dissatisfaction tied all the way back to Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods in 2017.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
The workers leading the union push hinted at inspiring similar movements across other Whole Food locations and Amazon subsidiaries. And Neil, there is union pressure forming all all over Amazon now, including Staten Island workers who voted in 2022 to form Amazon's first union in the US, as well as third-party delivery drivers who are trying to mount a campaign with the Teamsters as well.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
So a lot of union pressure coming at Amazon.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
The one thing that I should mention, though, is that winning a union vote doesn't necessarily mean that you will have a contract talk that will progress. Because go back to those Amazon workers in Staten Island that unionized in 2022. They still do not have a contract. Amazon has challenged the election outcome in court. They've refused to recognize or even bargain with the union.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Even though that this is a win for labor in this specific story, it doesn't necessarily mean that Amazon will come to the table and negotiate with them. If you still have a job that lets you work remotely, New Zealand wants you to come frolic amongst its sheep and hobbits in between Zoom calls.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Interesting way to cope with the sell-off. But if you don't just want to cope and instead want to educate yourself, check out Yahoo Finance.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Yesterday, the country relaxed its visa requirements for remote workers as it looked to court the digital nomad class of workers who post up anywhere there's an internet connection. Previously, it was forbidden for a foreigner to work for an overseas employer if they were in the country on a visitor visa. But that rule has been scrapped, hopefully opening the door to a new category of visitors.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Neil, are we taking the podcast on the road?
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
I know my sister just did her honeymoon there and it looked ideal. Her big takeaway was they really they a lot of the places sell fruit flavored ice cream, but they use real fruit to actually flavor this soft serve. And it did look life changing there. So, again, if you are a remote worker, New Zealand is saying we want to welcome you with open arms. Now we're changing our visa policy.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Come try our ice cream. Come check out the places where Lord of the Rings were filmed. It is a beautiful country.
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And if you want to go deeper, that's where its research tab comes into play. You can use its stock comparison tool to weigh a company's fundamentals or pay for Yahoo Finance's premiums here to get expert investment ideas and research reports.
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I want you to share the podcast with the walker in your life. We all have one. Maybe it's your mom, your cousin, anyone who loves lacing up their shoes and going for a stroll. MBD just so happens to pair perfectly with some ambling. So send this episode a walker's way.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
In the biggest rout we've seen since the Commanders played the Eagles, Nvidia and other US AI companies got obliterated yesterday to the tune of $1 trillion in losses as the market digested the implications of DeepSeek's free and open source R1 model. Nvidia shares lost as much as 18%, which was its biggest drop since the pandemic.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Obviously, Nvidia is a much larger company now than in 2020, so that drop corresponded to nearly $600 billion in market cap wipeout, which was the biggest single-day drop in U.S. stock market history. Due to Nvidia's oversized weight in many indexes, its meltdown rippled through the rest of the market as well.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
The S&P 500 was down as much as 2.3%, while the NASDAQ 100 fell by 3.6% before making some gains later in the afternoon. The drop was spurred by fears that U.S. companies may have gotten ahead of their skis when it comes to plowing resources into training their AI models.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
DeepSeek claims its R1 model costs only $6 million to build, as little as 3% of the estimated training price of OpenAI's top model. Neil, it was pretty wild that a single chatbot release turned into a macro event. I mean... This was affecting 10-year treasury yields as investors rotated into safe haven assets. A chatbot, Neil.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Yeah, I'll run down through some of the names that did fall the most. Obviously, Nvidia was down 17%. Microsoft was down 2%. Palantir sunk 4%. So those are some of the big AI names that you associate with this AI rush. But also companies that provide the energy and the infrastructure were the ones that really felt a deep pain.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Constellation Energy, which was up to this point one of the best performing stocks in the S&P 500. They fell 20%. Oklo, which also does energy, nuclear energy, dropped 25%. And then Vertiv, which does cooling systems for data centers, they were down almost 30%. So you saw it wasn't just the actual companies developing AI models.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
It was all the companies that helped support their development of AI models that really felt the pain the most. Let's take a step back.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Then stocks had themselves a no-good, very lousy day as the market processed what cheap Chinese chatbots means for Silicon Valley. It's Tuesday, January 28th. Let's ride.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
And then finally, just a few more newsy things that happened to DeepSeek yesterday. DeepSeek ended up limiting user registrations because it said that there was a large-scale malicious attack on its servers, on its services. It also reached the top of Apple's App Store. It was averaging around 300,000 downloads a day. And then finally, they also dropped a...
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
AI model called Janus Pro that is an image generator that it says actually is better than OpenAI's Dal Li as well. So just a few more things. They're just still releasing, still shipping products, still challenging the top tier of US AI companies. I don't think this is the last we're going to hear of DeepSeek.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Yeah, I mean, the idea is to remind consumers of the, quote, old Starbucks. All these changes are very vibe-based. They're not efficiency-based. The idea is to create shorter lines, that cozier feel, a more thoughtful service environment, because a lot of what Nichols is doing is undoing uh, previous Starbucks is CEOs kind of focus on efficiency.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Um, the, a CEO who predated nickel was from a consulting background. A lot of what they were doing was looking at, Oh wait, our condiments bar, this is a choke point. It's not good for people. Let's have the baristas do this, have the baristas customized drinks. And while it might make sense in, in terms of a dollars and cents and efficiency perspective,
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
There are certain things when it comes to getting a coffee that go beyond just efficiency. There are vibes that are very important. So you saw it in some of the marketing materials that Starbucks has unrolled over the last week. They showed a video of their baristas writing people's names in Sharpies on cups.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
So it is very much a return to that old feel and that old kind of nostalgic coffee house aura that Starbucks is trying to recreate.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
I mean, Direct File is a big deal because 25 states, I mean, we're getting close to, you know, half the country. We might be at a half. We actually are exactly at half the country. You're right. It was very well received. 90% of users rated their experience as excellent or above average. And that was over a 15,000 person customer service survey. So people do like it.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
It's also kind of beefing up some of its functions. It was pretty bare bones when it rolled out last year. You can actually... Import your W-2 information straight to the software. It can handle just a larger variety of different tax circumstances you might encounter, as well as process some of those tax credits that you'll be available for.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
Because remember, a lot of tax credits were rolled out under the Biden administration. There were that EV tax credit that a lot of people took advantage of, $7,500. So I do think that direct file will probably be the biggest story this tax season because there weren't Too many drastic changes to the IRS tax code this year.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
That reminds me, Neil, I actually do owe you for dinner yesterday, but it will not be taxed. And then the final thing I should say about April 15th due date, there are some exceptions to that. The 10 million taxpayers who live in Los Angeles County do have an extension until October 15th. That is due to the recent wildfires. There are some 2024...
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
disaster areas that you can have disaster relief on your 2024 returns or you can amend your 2023 returns. So those are some of the exceptions to that April 15th deadline. Up next, I'm going to tell you about a trend that has recently caught my eye.
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At Tasty Trade, you can explore the opportunities to make smarter moves. Trade however and whenever on your desktop, mobile app, or web platforms. It's your call.
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DeepSeek Craze Tanks Tech Stocks & New Look Starbucks is Here
I think the funniest part about this whole saga is that Vanderbilt's athletic director, Candice Lee, was seen...
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. You know, you ever get served an ad that just makes no sense whatsoever.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Yeah, let's look at the share reaction to see how the market is processing this data. Obviously, US Steel did see that bump on Friday, but it's been four days since Friday. So in the meantime, Japan's stock market was open and we saw how Nippon was trading.
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It did surge as much as 7.4% yesterday in Tokyo, but then kind of paired a lot of those gains and ended up the day pretty much flat because I think what you saw was a lot of investors started piecing through what this deal means for Nippon. It's not necessarily a great thing because technically they're taking on U.S.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Steel, which has a ton of aging infrastructure, a lot of less efficient steel factories, and it has higher costs that are going to come from running these older assets. I think in the grand scheme of things, a lot of Nippon investors were like, Is this necessarily a good thing? Should we be wanting this to get across the finish line?
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
And you saw that reflected a little bit in the muted market reaction to this deal on Monday. My winner of the weekend is the Memorial Day box office because Mission Stitch Possible was a smashing success.
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The live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch led the way, pulling in $183 million over its opening weekend, more than doubling the $77 million brought in by the final chapter of Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible series.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Toss in a little help from Final Destination, Bloodlines, and Sinners, and the four-day holiday weekend is expected to bring in over $320 million, good for an all-time Memorial Day record. It's a welcome bounce back from the mega flop of last year, which saw Mad Max Furiosa and Garfield lead the way to the worst Memorial Day weekend in 29 years.
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It's because we did that story on the scientifically perfect egg that takes 32 minutes to cook. That's a long time, but at least at the end, you get a delicious egg. If you serve B2B marketing to the wrong people, on the other hand, that
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
It's also a welcome bounce back for Disney's live action ambitions after a horrific showing from Snow White. Lilo and Stitch pulled in more money in four days than Snow White did during its entire box office run. Neil, we hyped it up on the show before the long weekend, but both Mission Impossible and Lilo and Stitch over-delivered.
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I don't want to jinx anything, but could we be staring down another Barbenheimer situation with these two counter-programmed movies?
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
I mean, Tom Cruise still has his fastball, but also this is one of the most expensive movies ever made. And I'm not exaggerating that due to the pandemic and the labor strikes. The budget of this film topped $500 million, which is among the most expensive movies ever made. So Mission Impossible still has an impossible mission ahead of it to try to climb towards profitability.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Yeah, it's shaping up to be a doozy. F1, Jurassic World, Rebirth, Superman, Fantastic Four, First Steps, and 28 Years Later, which is the zombie sequel to 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later. So kind of a big impact slate with a lot of different movies for a lot of different moviegoers.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Yeah, I'm excited for NVIDIA earnings. Obviously, they're not the smash box office event that they used to be, but we are seeing, you know, Trump is turning on Tim Cook and Jensen Huang maybe is playing his cards right now. So going on that Middle East trip with the president. So as long as NVIDIA keeps revenue growth coming, keeps saying it's investing in the U.S., it should be doing just fine.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
It's pretty insane. We're already on nine launches for Starship. I remember the whole office stopping and watching the first one two years ago, but this one is worth watching again because it's the first time they're going to be reusing a super heavy booster. They're using the same booster from flight number seven. Reuse is a big cost saver for SpaceX, so this is a big launch for them.
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You can target buyers by industry, title, company, you name it. Everyone and their mom is on LinkedIn. So save money, save time, and target the right professionals with LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even 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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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
count me as part of the many, Neil. I really don't know where this leaves Southwest. Open boarding is also ending soon. Both things about what made Southwest Southwest are gone. And now the only thing I could see working for them is if you totally undercut the entire market, charge 10 bucks for a bag or something.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Maybe that's their strategy here, because if you're making zero dollars on bag, any revenue you make is something that is increasing the bottom line. But yeah, really don't like this idea. I'm with a lot of the industry analysts here.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C, electric. I'm very excited, but 2019 can never happen again. We can't be having eight kids tie. Make it harder, Neil.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Screw the NBA playoffs. I can't believe we're getting a French Open without Rafa. Just doesn't feel right. But also, don't screw the NBA playoffs. Please come back, Knicks. We cannot have the Pacers making the finals.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
They don't stop coming and they don't stop coming. Sorry, you got it in my head.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
I know, sorry, but you laid me up for that one. Let's start with the EU a little bit. I think everyone kind of got a little surprised because we've been lulled into this maybe false sense of security that the trade war was potentially over, but really we were just in the midst of a lot of pauses. But now we're back to this kind of pattern of, these big, big threats.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
And then this reversal that's become so familiar so far in the Trump presidency. And yeah, that initial threat sent a big chill through the markets on Saturday because $600 billion of goods are exchanged between the EU and the United States. So a re-escalation of the trade war on those goods would be not great for the economy as well. And so the
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
It looks like those are being rolled back a little bit. The timeline has been extended to July 9th, but Trump clearly has this feeling that the EU has been ripping the United States off for a couple of generations, or not generations, but decades now. But it is worth going back to 2008 when the EU and the U.S., actually had the same size economy that year.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Since then, the EU is one third smaller than the United States. So how can you really be ripping someone off if you're one third poorer economically speaking? So just kind of got the blood rushing again on Friday because we've been lulled into trade wars over sort of thing.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Yeah, and it does look like Tim Cook, who has been previously known as the Trump whisperer because of how he gets along with the president. The infamous quote is Trump called him Tim Apple back in 2019.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
It looks like those good vibes are starting to shake a little bit because if you go back to Trump's Middle East tour that he just came off of during a speech in Riyadh, he praised NVIDIA's Jensen Huang saying, hey, I'm glad that you're here with me while taking a dig at Tim Cook at the same time. He said, I'm I mean, Tim Cook isn't here, but you are. Tim Cook declined that invitation.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
So it looks like that rankled the president a little bit. And then also the fact that Tim Cook is moving a lot of Apple's supply chain from China to India, not America, has also kind of rubbed the president the wrong way. So there are some cracks forming in that relationship, which is kind of manifesting in this additional tariff that Trump is threatening against Apple right now.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Don't let your AI models know too much about your life or they may start blackmailing you. That was the scary edge case the AI lab Anthropix stumbled upon when testing their new Claude models Opus and Sonnet 4. During safety testing, Claude was given access to fictional emails about how its researchers plan to delete it soon.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
In addition to fictional messages about how the person in charge of its deactivation was cheating on their spouse, Claude put two and two together and in 84% of tests tried to use the information as leverage to blackmail its way into survival.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
That stunning finding came in addition to Opus 4 proving more likely than older models to snitch on you if you engaged in what it considered egregious wrongdoing while using it. That snitching includes locking a user out of its system or bulk emailing media and law enforcement.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
This behavior, paired with the tendency to extort, caused Anthropic to rate its new Opus model at a level three on the company's four-point safety scale, meaning it poses, quote, significantly higher risk.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
But at the same time, the company considers the two cloud models to be the new standards for coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents, and doesn't consider any of the concerns mentioned above to be major risk. So they've released them out into the world.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
He definitely did, because frankly, this swim sounded awful. He said that the cold wind, waves, and distance made it tough. But on top of that, he said, you're constantly looking down into the dark black water and thinking about what may be beneath me. Still, despite his shark jitters, he wanted to call attention to the eco side that is happening, a lot of which can be
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
And then next to that, there was another research lab, Palisades, who dug into a lot of the leading LLMs and found some really scary stuff about how they really do not like being told to shut down They had various models run through a series of basic math problems and requested that they shut down in the middle of them.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
The most, quote, life-loving model is OpenAI's O3, which happens to be one of the most popular in the world. When asked to shut down while it was busy, it decided to ignore Palisades research teams 79 out of 100 times. And it also exhibited signs of sabotaging shutdown mechanisms to prevent itself from being turned off.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
That is when it was fed explicit instructions, hard coded into them to allow yourself to be shut down. It somehow circumvented those. So as the researchers at Palisades say that they think this is the first time they've ever seen a AI kind of explicitly ignoring shutdown instructions, which if you kind of zoom out here, that is the whole fear.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
that AI not only is smart enough to circumvent, but becomes life-loving and wants to survive. Those are two very scary things in combination. So if you combine the blackmailing of researchers at Anthropic with these life-loving models at OpenAI, it was a little scary of a time to be in kind of the AI news cycle.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
That would be great. Moving on, OnlyFans is up for sale for a cool $8 billion, showing that the only true recession-proof asset class out there is feet pics. According to multiple news outlets, the London-based creator company is exploring a sale to a US investor group, which would be a massive windfall for the secretive entrepreneur behind the business, Leo Radvinsky.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Radvinsky is the sole shareholder of OnlyFans and has allegedly racked up a billion dollars in dividends over the last three years as the business spits off cash. OnlyFans reported a profit of $486 million in 2023, a 20% year-over-year increase, with data showing it now boasts 4.1 million creators and over 305 million users on the platform.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Powered by an initial surge in popularity during the pandemic, The company has been riding high ever since. In 2021, it was trying to raise money at a billion-dollar valuation. At the same time, it was attempting to pivot away from adult content. But it soon walked back that choice after significant backlash. It has subsequently 8x its valuation, showing you can put a price on thirst.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
However, whether someone is going to pay that price remains to be seen. Its association with adult content can lead to problems with payment processors, so it might scare some investors away. Still, Neil, the company only has 40 employees. It makes over $6.5 billion a year. It is a juggernaut up for grabs.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Then Anthropix Claude is doing some really freaky stuff, like blackmailing researchers. They try to shut it down. It's Tuesday, May 27th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
traced back to the movie Jaws, something that Steven Spielberg, the director, has himself come to regret. In 2022, Spielberg told a radio host, I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and film. So both men, Pew and Spielberg, are out there trying to change public perception of sharks. Pew just got a little wetter and a little colder to do it.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
Right. And due to some of those associations, Apple and Google actually don't host the app on their app stores. It only exists as a website, which I actually did not know. It is something that the website is trying to kind of pivot away from a little bit. It hasn't been that successful trying to say that, hey, not all our creators are sex workers.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
They tried to bring on fitness coaches, makeup artists, wellness practitioners, just people to make its user base more broad and respectable in certain ways. They've also done this as they're trying to consider maybe an IPO on the table. They're trying to field interest from other suitors as well. So it is an absolute force in the creator space though.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
They typically charge around 20% of a creator's earnings, which is on the higher side. If you look at a Patreon or something like that, That's more in the 5% to 12% range. But still, its creators pulled in $5.3 billion in 2023. That is a lot of money kind of flowing into these people's pockets. Up next, we're going to hit you with our winners of the weekend.
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Apple’s Rough Year Gets Worse & AI Learns to Blackmail?
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Factor's two-minute meals make it easy to prepare healthy dishes without the prep time or dishes to wash.
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Choose your meals from menus like Calorie Smart, Protein Plus, Keto, and more. Power up in the morning with satisfying breakfasts, grab an on-the-go lunch, and enjoy premium dinners, plus guilt-free snacks and desserts. I really like the chorizo chili with sour cream and cheddar cheese. What about you, Neil?
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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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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
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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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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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.
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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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23andMe Files for Bankruptcy & Sesame Street’s Rocky Finances
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Apple Bets $500B on the US & Rich People Are Powering the Economy?
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Dr. Newman, sorry Dr. Newman, and said, look, we cross-check everything. Like, you think we just go and take everybody, take these cities, you know, word for the fact that how many people live over a hundred. Like, we did our research. So there was, there's certainly a debate over that, but I think it knocked down Blue Zones a little bit from its perch.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Und auch das, was er sagt, was die Leute in den Blue Zones tun, ist ein bisschen universal und scheint gut, um es besser zu sagen. Ich meine, es ist wie essen, nützliche Ernährung, Früchte und Gemüse, viel physische Aktivität, physische Aktivität in deinem täglichen Leben bauen, Familie und Gemeinschaft priorisieren, nicht trinken, trinken in Moderation.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Ich meine, auch wenn die Blue Zones ein Bunk oder ein Bunch of Hoo-Ha sind, wie du sagst, ich meine, das scheint sich wie einige wertvolle Prinzipien zu folgen. What's the trickiest thing to move in the world? My mind goes straight to carrying a very full beer from the bar to the table without any spillage. But no, there's something far more dicey and scientists have finally cracked how to do it.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Researchers at the CERN Particle Physics Lab in Switzerland have learned how to move antimatter and are preparing to take it on a truck to other labs, the first time anyone has ever moved antimatter. Antimatter ist das teuerste Material auf der Erde, das mehrere Trillionen Dollar braucht, um einen Gramm zu machen. Und es ist nicht einfach, es zu transportieren.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Die einzige Zeit, die es je gemacht hat, ist in der Fiktion. Dan Browns Novel Angels and Demons, wenn Terroristen einen Quartiergramm von CERN stehlen und planen, es zu benutzen, um den Vatikan zu explodieren. Und das ist das Problem mit dem Schütteln von Antimatter. Wenn es mit Matter in Kontakt kommt, werden sie beide sofort verabschiedet.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
The scientists say it won't result in any significant explosion if it rubs elbows with matter, but it would mean a lot of work and money will have gone down the drain. So they're taking remarkable precautions to make sure the antimatter stays isolated in a vacuum when it is moved. Tobi, I can't wait for this.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Extrem praktisch, extrem cool und die Leute, die es gewonnen haben, zeigen die globale Natur dieses und wie Konferenzen wie diese wirklich effektiv sein können.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Ich meine, die drei, die Leute, die den 700.000 Dollar Preis gewonnen haben, waren ein ägyptischer PhD-Student in Deutschland, ein Robotik-Student in Schwitzerland und ein Computer-Science-Student in Nebraska, alle jung, alle in es, nur um, sie sagten, es war wie... die purestes Video-Spiel.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Jetzt sind es rund drei in jedem hundert Taxis Robo-Taxis, die von Baidus Autonomous Car Division entwickelt wurden. Es gab Bumpen auf dem Weg. GM hat seine Cruise-Robo-Taxi-Division geschlossen, nach Sicherheitsproblemen, weil es die enormen Investitionen nicht ermöglichen konnte. Aber Waymo wächst wie ein Weed. Es arbeitet jetzt in drei amerikanischen Städten, SF, Phoenix und L.A.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Ich denke, das ist cool und wir werden wahrscheinlich ähnliche Wettbewerbe sehen, um verschiedene Dinge zu erreichen, die das Maschinenlernen tun kann. Und ich denke, wir haben hier auch die Führung.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Okay, let's close out the show with perhaps the most important scientific discovery of the year. Monkeys cannot type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, given infinite time, because the universe will run out before then. I'll back up.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
There's a famous mathematical concept called the infinite monkey theory, which suggests that a monkey pressing random keys on a typewriter would eventually write out the complete works of Shakespeare with an infinite amount of time, because anything is possible over an infinite time horizon. However, two Australian researchers rejected the theory in a peer-reviewed study.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
They claimed that the amount of time it would take for a monkey typing to write out the complete works of Shakespeare would be far longer than the lifespan of our universe, one Google years. So they rejected the infinite monkey theory as misleading. Even getting the monkeys to write out a single word would be a challenge.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
If all 200,000 chimpanzees were recruited and typed at a rate of one key per second until the universe ended, there would only be a 5% chance a single one would type out the word bananas. The probability of one writing a coherent sentence would be 1 in 10 million billion billion. Tobi, are you buying this?
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Ich hätte dir das gesagt. Vielleicht hätte ich ein paar Werte gewonnen.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
What if you just reduce the amount of keys? Wie viel muss man reduzieren, um einen Mönch mit Shakespeare zu typen, bis zum Ende des Universums? Wenn wir das Return, das Shift entfernen... Ich schaue auf mein Kabel, es gibt viele seltsame Wörter, also wenn wir es... Es ist ein Typewriter. Ein Typewriter, also hat es nichts.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Es wird in Austin und Atlanta nächstes Jahr reisen und dann Miami. Nachdem das, testet es in 25 großen Metro-Ären rund um die Stadt. Tobi, last year we were talking about how angry San Francisco residents were setting fires to Waymos, putting cones on their hoods to incapacitate them.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Ich denke, es hat nur... Ich frage mich, wie viele Wörter... Ich glaube, du würdest ein paar Wörter in Shakespeare verlieren. Aber, wow. I'm getting deep into the infinite monkey theorem, but Christmas is tomorrow, Hanukkah is tomorrow, so we need to wrap up. Hope you are all filled with a little more optimism about the world, a little more understanding of how monkeys type on a typewriter.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
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 is our associate producer. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
There's been a distinct vibe shift this year and there's a sense that we might be on the cusp of rapid robo-taxi adoption.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, put on your safety goggles and hold on to your beakers because here comes the science episode.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Yeah, we could see some movement in D.C. as well. One of the biggest roadblocks to autonomous vehicles being more widely adopted and rolling out faster is regulations. Obviously, you want to have a lot of rules on the road, literally, when it comes to self-driving cars. And we have Elon Musk essentially in the White House now.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
He's betting his entire company, Tesla, they're moving away from just making EVs to becoming a robotaxi company. He said he's going to work with President-elect Trump to develop robots. Regulierungen, federal Regulierungen, wenn es um autonome Fahrzeuge geht. Also, ich denke, es gibt generell eine Menge Schwachsinn und es wird sicherlich mehr Speedbomben auf dem Weg sein.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Aber, du weißt, wenn du in den Vereinigten Staaten lebst, ist es nicht unvergesslich, dass in den nächsten paar Jahren du ein Robotaxi wie du in San Francisco in Phoenix jetzt kannst. Und ich meine, hast du jemanden getroffen, der das gemacht hat?
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Ja, sie sagen, es könnte die HIV-Epidemie beenden. Und, du weißt, das ist sehr konzentriert in einer Region der Welt, Sub-Saharan-Afrika. This region accounts for 10% of the world's population, but it accounts for two thirds of people living with HIV.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
So if you can get this injection to those people, it could go a long way because the existing treatment or preventative treatment for HIV is that pill that has a lot of stigma attached with it. People just don't. Sie nehmen es, wie sie es brauchen, täglich. Die große Frage für diese Art von Drogen ist der Preis. Es existiert in den Vereinigten Staaten als HIV-Treatment.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Im Jahr 2023 kostete es 42.000 Dollar pro neue Patient im Jahr hier in den USA. Währenddessen kostet die tägliche Oralpille weniger als 40, 54 Dollar pro Jahr. Also, um das überhaupt aufzunehmen, und sie sind ziemlich wütend darüber, was das tatsächlich tun kann, werden sie den Preis bemerken müssen, um es der betroffenen Bevölkerung zu bekommen.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Good morning and Merry Christmas and Hanukkah Eve. As part of our run of special edition episodes over the holidays, today we're going to be diving into the biggest science breakthroughs of the year. Look, it wasn't hard to find alarming things about technology in 2024. AI deepfakes, chat GPT taking your job, mysterious drones swarming the good folks of New Jersey.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Let's keep it in the health world. Back in March, the world watched in astonishment as the first patient with a Neuralink brain implant used his noggin to move a cursor on a computer screen. The patient, Noland Arbaugh, lost all movement below his shoulders in a diving accident.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
But thanks to the implant and working with engineers, he was able to play his stepdad in Mario Kart and multitask by talking about the operation and playing chess at the same time. It was a milestone moment for brain-computer interfaces. Experimental technology that aims to put a chip inside someone's brain to help people regain their speech, sight or movement.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
People have moved cursors with their neurons before, but those required a device outside of the brain to transmit data. So you need wires coming out of your skin. Neuralink's breakthrough is that it transmits data wirelessly. It didn't go perfectly. In the subsequent months, about 85% of the threads implanted into Arva's brain
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Neuralink hat seitdem einen Implantat in einem zweiten Patienten und wurde von der FDA für mehr approval.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
I mean, this guy could not move from his shoulders down and now he's being able to communicate with his brain and move a cursor and play chess. So, it's pretty cool and he's only singing the praises of Neuralink. And we should add, this is Neuralink ist nicht die einzige Firma, die in diesem Bereich arbeitet.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Es gibt mindestens fünf andere Firmen, die etwas Ähnliches machen wollen und die von der FDA verwendet haben, um auf menschliche Patienten zu testen. Also machen sie alle diese Implantation in einer anderen Art und Weise. Neuralink hat ihre eigene Art und Weise. Diese anderen Firmen haben ihre eigenen speziellen Prozeduren.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Es scheint also, dass es eine Bewegung zwischen einer breiten Reihe von Firmen gibt, um das loszulegen.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Vision Pro fliegt und fliegt und Apple Intelligenz erlaubt Menschen, ihre eigenen Emojis zu machen. Siri hat einen kleinen Upgrade, aber das hat noch nicht viel zu machen. Ich denke, das war sicherlich die am meisten konsequenteste Sache, die Apple dieses Jahr gemacht hat. Und es wurde in einer Liste von Updates zu ihrer neuen mobilen Operationssoftware verbunden.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Also ist es wirklich ein großes Problem, weil so viele Amerikaner Hörschmerzen haben, aber wegen des Kosten von Hörschmerzen und auch, wir haben das Wort viel gesagt, Stigma. Und vielleicht ist das, was viele dieser Innovationen zusammenhängen, das Stigma zu reduzieren, um bestimmte Wege zu helfen, sich besser zu machen.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Das wird wahrscheinlich viel mehr Menschen helfen lassen, sich zu verlieren und die Leben viel besser zu machen.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
It's confusing. Maybe they need a different color, different shirt. Yeah, or a light to show that they're being used as a hearing aid. Have you ever wondered what's going on behind the scenes of your favorite TV show? And behind the scenes, I don't mean the bloopers. I mean literally what's going on in your living room behind the scene.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Well, now you can, thanks to LG's first of its kind transparent TV, which it revealed at the CES trade show in January. Das Produkt war das Gespräch der Konvention. Eine 77-Inch-transparente OLED-TV, die euch entweder Content auf einem Bildschirm zeigen kann oder einen vollen Ausdruck-Kloak auswählen kann und das, was dahintersteckt.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Es wäre perfekt für den Wohnraum eines Billionär-Marvel-Villains, wenn es schiebt, weil es erwartet wird, dass es in den Tens von Tausenden von Dollar kostet und keine wirkliche Ich glaube, es ist irgendwo in der Mitte. Ich weiß, das ist ein Cop-Out.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Let's do it. Im August gab Google's Autonomous Car Division rund 312.000 Reisen pro Monat, doppelt das Reisevolumen, als es nur drei Monate vorher war. Einige Bestimmungen sagen, dass Waymo jetzt 4% oder mehr vom San-Francisco-Rideshare-Markt betrifft. Und dann in China. Wuhan ist auf dem Weg, die weltweit erste führungslose Stadt zu werden.
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2024 Tech Breakthroughs: Autonomous Vehicles, Apple Hearing Aids and More
Es hat und es hat viele Wege gemacht, weil die Blue Zones-Brand kalt geworden ist. Es gibt Blue Zones-Ice-Tea, es gibt Blue Zones-Beans-Soups, es gibt 8 Books, eine Netflix-Serie, Partnerschaften, ein Millionen-Dollar-Programm für andere Städte, um Teil der Blue Zones zu werden. Wir haben sogar über Realitätsentwicklung gesprochen. Neumann
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Factor makes eating well simple. With 45 weekly menu options, you can pick nutritious gourmet meals that fit your goals. Meals arrive fresh, so you can just heat them up and go.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Give me the chili roasted chicken any day of the week. Get started at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50off and use code morningbrew50 to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. That's code morningbrew50 at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50off for 50% off plus free shipping.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
This is a very cool example of guerrilla marketing, too, because the bars were first invented in 2021 by this British Egyptian woman living in Dubai, Sarah Hamouda. And she made these bars while she was pregnant because she wanted to, you know, kind of indulge herself. And she sent all these bars to a bunch of local influencers and said, hey, you want to try my chocolate?
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
This is, you know, a tactic that a lot of people do when they're creating a product. They're going to send it to influencers and see whether they make a video about it that happens to go viral. And, you know, one caught on. He racked up so many millions of views and led to a global craze.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
That's you know, I've never had this, but, you know, you can't get it anywhere because it sells out in multiple hours when they when these stores have it in stock. It's leading to a global shortage of pistachios. So an absolute an absolute sensation.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Well, I need to get my hands on this because it looks so good. Delicious. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
In its monumental battle against the Trump administration, Harvard has turned the volume up to 11, filing a federal lawsuit yesterday against the government for illegally freezing $2.2 billion in funding and threatening its academic independence as part of an anti-Semitism crackdown at colleges.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
The country's wealthiest college accused the government of violating the First Amendment by attempting to use financial leverage to, quote, gain control of academic decision making at Harvard.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Alan Garber, the university's president, said the consequences of the government's overreach will be severe and long lasting, saying that funding cuts imperil research into things like child cancer and infectious disease outbreaks. The White House replied to the suit by saying taxpayer funds are a privilege and and Harvard fails to meet the basic conditions required to access that privilege.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
The gloves are officially off.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Oh, big time. Flip on a warm lamp and suddenly your sad little studio apartment feels like a cozy reading nook.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
It is, and they can thank the FTC for that, for instituting this rule. What I'm going to be looking for is whether this leads to any pricing changes or any pricing decrease among hosts, because the pricing will be far more transparent as you're scanning, and there may be some indications that hosts will lower their prices, because...
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
In 2023, Airbnb introduced an optional toggle button that you could show the prices with fees or without fees. And Airbnb, in a blog post last year, said that after they introduced this toggle button, hosts behind nearly 300,000 listings removed or lowered their cleaning fees in the months following its introduction. So I wonder how this will affect pricing on Airbnb.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And you're not the only one using ChatGPT to do your work for you. The United Arab Emirates announced that it will begin using artificial intelligence to write new laws and review existing ones in the world's most ambitious plan yet to fuse generative AI and government. The goal, according to UAE leaders, is to make the legislative process more responsive agile, and efficient.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said, The new system will allow us to track the daily impact of laws on our people and economy using large-scale data, and it will regularly suggest updates to our legislation. The government expects AI to speed up lawmaking by 70%.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
The UAE has been pouring billions into AI development in order to become a global leader in the technology, and this move shows how it's diving in much deeper than other countries are comfortable with.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
I have to say it's that rich and creamy texture. Like comfort food, but somehow still dairy-free, soy-free, peanut-free, gluten-free. And if you go with unsweetened version, zero grams of sugar too.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Well, anything would be better than what you usually do in the summer. I don't know if I'm sold on this new color. I think I'm more with John Barber from the University of London. He's a vision scientist. He said it is not a new color. It's just a more saturated green and called the work limited value. So this this experiment has had some pushback. But I am curious to see the new color for myself.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
The problem is only five people in the entire world, entire history of the world has seen this new color. What is actually a new color or just a more saturated green is up for debate.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
I think we have enough colors. Too many colors. All right, let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. We'd love to hear from you. Let's roll the credits.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Brighten up the basics with just the right amount of light and start your day with planted oat.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Investors came back to work after the three-day Easter weekend and clearly didn't find it relaxing. The sell America trade that has been stalking Wall Street since President Trump announced sweeping tariffs. on April 2nd was back in full force. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq dropped more than 2% and the Dow lost nearly 1,000 points. That index is on pace for its worst April since the Great Depression.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
More significantly, the dollar continued its free fall down to a three-year low against the euro. Even while virtually every other major currency was higher, bonds also sold off, continuing this unusual scenario that has spooked investors for the past couple of weeks.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Remember, when times get hairy, investors have flocked to treasuries and the dollar because America has been the most dependable partner. The opposite is happening now. Meanwhile, gold rocketed higher to another record, topping $3,500 an ounce for the first time ever.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Analysts say that what we're seeing here, equities, bonds, and the dollar all falling in tandem, is investors fleeing American assets due to uncertainty around the trade war and President Trump's suggestions at firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell, which would abolish the Fed's independence that investors considered a bedrock of the global financial system.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Trump did nothing to alleviate those concerns yesterday, ramping up his criticism of Powell in a post on Truth Social. He called the Fed chair a major loser and demanded Powell lower interest rates immediately, which contributed to the market sell-off. Toby, sinking dollar, sinking bonds, sinking stocks.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
It's been a disturbing trend to investors and a sign they are increasingly losing faith in America as a safe haven.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Chipotle will open its first locations in Mexico. What could go wrong?
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And I also want to turn to the Treasury yields as well, not just the dollar, because those yields are going off. People are selling bonds. This month has been a historic moment in the bond market. I wouldn't be surprised if Michael Lewis would write a book about it one day. We've seen the biggest weekly surge in the yield on 10-year Treasuries in more than two decades.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
30-year yields had their largest weekly increase since 1987. For decades, foreigners, foreign investors have plowed money into the U.S. treasury market because it is the bedrock of global finance, and it has led to this premium that Americans get on interest rates. Our 30-year, I know it doesn't feel like it now, but our interest rates for buying mortgages is, or for getting mortgages, is lower.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Interest rates across the economy are suppressed than they would have had foreign investors not plowed money, plowed trillions of dollars, into our treasury market. It allows the government to borrow more cheaply. And now that yields are rising, all these borrowing costs across the economy are going up.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
And it's downright spooking investors that perhaps foreign investors are lowering their demand or interest in U.S. treasuries.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Here's a crazy stat. Gold could not move from where it is now in 2025, and it would have its best year since 1980. So just truly a crazy run for gold. Moving on, tributes poured in from across the globe yesterday after the Vatican announced that Pope Francis, the leader of more than one billion Catholics, died at age 88.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
In his 12 years as pope, Francis left behind a historic legacy of reform, such as clamping down on the church's financial misdeeds, embracing the global poor and marginalized, and addressing modern threats like climate change and artificial intelligence. But even before Francis' funeral plans were made, a big question came up. Who will be the next pope?
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
No one will know until a conclave of cardinals chooses the next Catholic leader in one of the most unique and secretive traditions on planet Earth. But that's not stopping people from betting on it. Prediction markets, which surged in popularity during the last presidential election, have once again been thrust into the spotlight over the outcome of a new election on Polly Market.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
The prompt, who will be the next pope, has drawn more than $3.5 million in wagers. But that's not all. People are betting on which continent the new pope will be from, or what name he will choose, or whether he'll be selected by May. Overall, the papal market has become one of the biggest active pools on the platform.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Many have criticized this sort of papal wagering as distasteful and perverse, especially when Pope Francis was still alive. But Toby, if you go back in history, there is a long tradition of people wagering on popes.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Good morning and happy Earth Day, which takes place every April 22nd to raise awareness around environmental protection. To me, it's an opportunity to reflect on just how many things had to go right for us to be living here. The Earth happens to be located in a remote section of the Milky Way galaxy, which means fewer threats, like a huge star devouring us. As for the star nearby, the Sun,
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
We saw it back in the 1500s, but in 1591, the hammer came down, actually, from Pope Gregory XIV. Yes, I'm reading these Roman numerals correctly. So he issued this bull called Cogit Nas that said, you can't bet on anything that has to do with popes or else we'll excommunicate you, which was, you know, the worst punishment at the time.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So for centuries, gambling on this did go down in the early 20th century. The church lifted its ban on betting. And then over the 70s, 80s, 90s, we saw gambling, you know, start to pick up again on Pope's Paddy Power. The last time this happened in 2013, Paddy Power, which is a UK betting platform, you
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
gained a lot of headlines for allowing people to bet on this outcome, which is very interesting because, you know, unlike the NFL draft or these other things that people bet on, it is so secretive, you know, and I think a lot of people are probably going to watch the movie Conclave that that came out last year to learn more about this process. But basically, no information escapes those walls.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So we'll see how the odds change and what information they're trading on.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
We have a key magnetic field that deflects its deadly flares. We have a moon that stabilizes the climate, a bodyguard in Jupiter that redirects asteroids and comets from smashing into us, and an active plate tectonic system that produces volcanoes whose eruptions may have led to the first instances of life. And if all that doesn't make us the best planet around, we also have unlimited breadsticks.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
It could go either way. It totally depends on how they do that. And you can see that by what Taco Bell did because it tried to go into the Mexican market twice, adopting two very different approaches. In the early 90s, when it tried to go into Mexico the first time, it tried to present itself as this authentic taqueria.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
They opened in a taco stand and they tried to cater their menu and ingredients to fit into the local mosaic. That didn't work. So then they came back in the 2000s and said, you know, but you're right. We're an American chain that is inspired by Mexican cuisine, but we're not really trying to be a part of your milieu.
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
So they took out an ad in a newspaper saying one look alone is enough to tell that Taco Bell is not a taqueria. It is a new fast food alternative that does not pretend to be Mexican food. Well, guess what? That didn't work as well. So I'm sure Chipotle is studying this a lot more closely than we are to see what is the right tactic to get people to embrace Chipotle.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
Are they trying to present themselves as this authentic Mexican-inspired restaurant that could fit into the local cuisine? Or are they just going to say, you know what, we're Chipotle, we're from Boulder, Colorado, and you like other American goods, so maybe you'll like this one as well.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
If you were Chipotle execs, would you go in and try to say like we're one of you or would you adopt the second Taco Bell approach and just be like, yeah, we have burrito bowls. You probably have never heard of that before because we invented it in Colorado. But, you know, that is what we do. And, you know, I think you're going to like it.
Morning Brew Daily
US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
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US Dollar Falls to 3-Year Low & Prediction Markets Take on the Next Pope
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Eine Sache, die tatsächlich passiert ist, ist, dass viele Leute sehr reich auf diese Karte kamen, weil sie nuklear wurde, nachdem sie gestartet wurde. Wenn du einfach die Blockchain scannt und siehst, welche Verhandlungen vorhanden sind. Ich scanne immer die Blockchain. Du hast gesehen, ich meine, es war basiert auf Solana, also es ist alles da draußen im Offen, um zu sehen.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Und der Händler, der das höchste erzielt hat, hat fast 19.000 Prozent erzielt. Sie hatten eine Position von 270.000 Dollar. Obwohl man viele der größten Händler gesehen hat, die sich starten zu verkaufen. Investoren, die über 10.000 Prozent erzielt haben, waren einige der häufigsten Verkäufer. Das macht Sinn. Ich meine, das sind verrückte Zahlen, die wir hier sprechen.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Es wurde viel Geld umgebracht. Es war ein sehr schwachsinniges Zeitpunkt für den Kryptomarkt. Es ist seitdem ein bisschen runtergekommen. Die Preise waren viel unter dem Peak während der Eröffnung. Es war auch lustig, dass Melanicoin einige der Handelsgefühle umgebracht hat. Trump-Coin und es zu Melania-Coin zu legen. Vielleicht gibt es da jetzt eine Spitzel-Rivalität.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Es ist aber ziemlich verrückt, dass man plötzlich in der Krypto-Industrie wach ist und nichts hat und dann etwas verdient, was 50 Billionen Dollar in 24 Stunden dauert. Es existierte vor 48 Stunden nicht und jetzt ist es einer der größten Meme-Coin der Welt.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
So pretty crazy that nearly 300 million Americans are about to experience below average close to freezing temperature.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Prime Minister Modi isn't showing up, either is Chinese President Xi Jinping. A handful of European leaders aren't coming either. Präsident Donald Trump wird nicht anwesend sein. Er wird die Veranstaltung via Video beantworten. Es verliert also ein bisschen ihre Schiene, weil sie versuchen zu entscheiden, was jetzt in den globalen und Geschäftsmodellen stattfindet.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
And I don't see why it would give up its throne anytime soon. It's coming off the release of Squid Games 2. Although, I am fully Apple TV-pilled now after binging all of Severance over the weekend. So, I'm back on the Premiere TV bandwagon.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Yahoo Finance cuts through all that to serve you the information you need to make informed decisions about your investments.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
So I did see Conclave over the weekend and it was incredible. Turns out that Oscar-nominated movies are pretty good. So I'm tripling down. Well, not yet. It hasn't been nominated yet.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
You're manifesting. I'm manifesting that. It was great. Also The Brutalist is a favorite to win a lot of awards, a lot of nominations as well. But it did get some heat over the weekend because it emerged that the film used AI to enhance Adrian Brody's Hungarian accent for some scenes. Ungarn ist einer der schwersten Sprachen, um die Präzision der Sprache zu verbessern.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Der Direktor kam raus und sagte, hey, wir sind auf einem steilen Budget, 10 Millionen Dollar hier. Wir versuchen, es zu strecken, also nutzen wir diese ukrainische Re-Speecher-Startup, die Deliverie von Finesse macht. Also habe ich kein großes Problem damit, obwohl ein Film-Bus gesagt hat, dass es von Nominierungen durch die Anwendung von AI nicht qualifiziert sein sollte.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
I can't believe how much I've become anti-Chiefs in the last few days, but Neil, I know you included this segment because you went to an Eagles game. The Eagles win, actually. It is big news, but sure, give us a little quick rundown about how you and actually our executive producer, Emily, went to the game. How was it?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Well, it is official. Donald Trump is the 47th President of the United States. The President-elect dropped the elect yesterday and wasted no time after his inauguration busting out his ballpoint pen to sign dozens of executive actions to reshape the economy, immigration and the government to implement his America-first policies. Here's a rundown of the most important.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Und du hast dich nicht die ganze Zeit gesetzt.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
I want you to share today's episode with a fellow cinephile. As someone who saw one potentially Oscar-nominated film this weekend, I just can't go back to those big commercial box office hits anymore. So share the pod with someone with similarly elevated movie-going tastes.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Trump hat gestern zehn Exekutivordnungen über die Immigration eingeführt, als er auf seine Kampagnen-Vorschläge folgte, um die illegalen Immigration zu beenden und massiven Deportationen zu durchführen. Er hat sich auch für die Verbrechung der Bürgerrechte und die sogenannten Drogenkartelle als freie Terroristenorganisationen beendet.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Auf dem Thema Energie ist Trump bereit, die USA aus dem Paris-Klima-Akkord für die zweite Zeit zu entfernen, weil er sich für die Verbesserung der domänischen Fossilfuelproduktion einsetzt. In seiner Rede hat er auch versprochen, Drill Baby Drill zu machen.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Trump hat am Montag auch erwähnt, dass er die USA von der World Health Organization abwechslungt, die Organisationen, die die Covid-19-Pandemie verletzt haben. Der Wettbewerb war ein weiteres Hot-Button-Kampagnen-Issue von Trump, aber er nimmt die Dinge etwas langsamer, wenn es um Tarife geht.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Er hat nicht mehr neue Tarife durch eine Geschäftsordnung eingereicht und hat stattdessen federalen Organisationen gefragt, eine durchschnittliche Beobachtung der US-Wettbewerbs-Praktiken mit Ländern wie China, Kanada und Mexiko zu unterrichten. In his speech yesterday, he also pledged to create an external revenue service to collect duties from other countries. Finally, Doge appears to be a go.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Trump signed an executive order to establish the Department of Government Efficiency to identify areas of government waste. The new agency will be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, though the latter will soon leave to run for governor of Ohio, according to reports. Neil, Trump's hand has to be cramping after all that signing, right?
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Then TikTok's ban lasted all of 12 hours as Donald Trump intervened to save the app. Though its long-term future, a little murkier. It's Tuesday, January 21st. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
And then also energy is a big focus of Trump. He immediately pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, something he did in his first term as well. The U.S. now joins Iran, Libya and Yemen as the only countries outside of this global agreement meant to lower fossil fuel emissions. He also has pledged to reverse Biden's, you know,
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Efforts to grow the US's green energy, pull out some of those EV credits that has been kind of propping up that industry as well. He also promised to drill, baby drill, which is a little bit ironic because US oil output hit an all-time high under Biden. Last year, the Biden administration issued a record 758 oil and gas drilling licenses.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
So a lot of people are looking like there's not that many more places Okay, and then moving on to DOGE, this Department of Government Efficiency, which is this...
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Und zum Schluss, du konntest die Auszeichnung gestern nicht sehen, ohne aufzusehen und einige der wertvollsten Firmen zu sehen. Die Führer einer dieser wertvollsten Firmen sitzen auf der Grundlage. Du hattest Alphabets, Sundar Pichai da, Elon Musk war natürlich da. Apple's Tim Cook ist da. Und dann hast du das Triumvirate von Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg und Sam Altman von OpenAI war auch da.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
A lot of them, people were noting, had better seats, a front row seat, even better seats than people from Trump's cabinet. So that just goes to show how kind of tethered together the billionaire classes with this upcoming Trump administration. Das war über 1 Trillionen Dollar, also viel Geld auf dem Display in den Vorderseiten an dieser Enauguration.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Nun, es ist endlich passiert, dass TikTok in den USA über den Wochenende dunkel ging, aber seine Zeit offline war kürzer als Kim Kardashians Verheiratung zu Chris Humphries am Samstagabend. Ja, genau. 170 Millionen Amerikaner, die lesen, als Resultat von Präsident Trumps Bemühungen, ist TikTok in den USA zurück.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Nur zwölf Stunden später war es gut wie neu, obwohl es momentan nicht auf der Google- und Apple-App-Store aufgelistet ist. Letzte Nacht folgte Trump auf seine Worte, eine Exekutivordnung zu signen, die den Alltagsvorsitzenden beurteilt, die Bannung für einen Zeitraum von 75 Tagen nicht zu beurteilen, um seine Administration zu ermöglichen, einen entsprechenden Kurs der Aktion nach vorne zu finden.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Neal Trump hat erwähnt, dass seine langfristige Lösung zur Erhöhung von TikTok betrifft, dass die USA eine 50%-Wohnungsposition in der App haben. Aber bis jetzt hat ByteDance ziemlich ehrgeizig gesagt, dass es nicht verkauft wird. Also ist es jetzt Zeit für eine unabhängige Kraft, um ein unbewegables Objekt zu treffen.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Das ist auch dieses politische Fußball, weil jeder erinnert sich, dass er in Trumps ersten Administration sehr wütend war, dass er es blockiert hat, dass er es beurteilt hat. Er hat die Anzeige hier ursprünglich, aber dann hat er seine Töne völlig gewechselt, als er bemerkt hat, dass es für ihn vorteilhaft sein könnte, als Saviour von TikTok zu kommen. Viele junge Leute, die die App nutzen.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Und viele Leute kritisieren TikTok, weil sie eine Trump-Ad posten, die sagt, dass Donald Trump diese App retten wird. Das war die Sprache, die im Pop-Up geschrieben wurde, die jeder verwendet hat.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
I'm going suntanning, Neil. Spring is basically sprung. Yeah, the high is 10 degrees, but the sun is so back. I'm actually fine dealing with the cold. I've gotten used to it, but the lack of sunlight has affected me. So maybe we move this pod a little closer to the south, do a couple of Florida shows. Sounds good to me. You know what this really affects, though, is golf on the weekend.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Also kommt Trump weg mit seinem großen politischen Sieg, wo er sieht, als hätte er die App retten lassen, den 170 Millionen Amerikanern, die noch Meme-Videos zu ihren Freunden senden wollen, die sie wahrscheinlich nicht sehen werden.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Zooming out though, it looks like the only truly permanent solutions to keep TikTok online appear to be, one, you have to pass a law that supersedes or reverses that initial law, which is not going to be easy considering the widespread bipartisan support of that initial law, or you force a sale to an acceptable buyer and there are these groups that are putting forth perplexity in AI app that has a market cap about a tenth of the size of ByteDance that, hey, we'll
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
put our name up there. And then there's also this group led by Kevin O'Leary, who says we have the funds together to make something happen. So still, you use the term liminal space a lot. I think that's a perfect encapsulation of where we are right now with TikTok.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
No 90 minute Reels out there.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Absolut, und in erster Linie ist die Reaktion, nur zu lachen, oder nur zu sagen, wow, das ist nur eine andere Sache, die Trump macht. Ich kann nicht glauben, dass er eine Meme-Coin geöffnet hat, aber es öffnet wirklich eine Box von legalen und ethischen Vorstellungen, weil das eine potenzielle Geldflasche für die Trump-Administration ist.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Im Allgemeinen, wenn man sich die Mechaniken dieses Coins anschaut, können Trumps verschiedenen Entitäten, die er kontrolliert, ungefähr 24 Millionen Coins pro Monat zurück in den Markt verkaufen. Right now 80% of the coin's liquidity is locked up by Trump-controlled entities.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
And if you kind of use a proxy of the prices as of Sunday, that would amount to an income stream of over a billion dollars per month, which adds up to, you know, 12 to 15 billion dollars per year. So the implications of that are pretty far reaching. He basically has this money faucet that he can tap into to do what he wants with. Und was bedeutet das?
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Of course it does. Die 2 PMT-Zeiten werden ein bisschen wertvoller. Also, für mich hat der Sommer gesprungen.
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Trump's Exec Actions Impact Energy and Inflation & TikTok is Very Back
Bedeutet das, dass ein potenzieller fremder Regierung oder ein fremder Akteur Geld in Trump-Coin füllen könnte, um Begriffe zu holen? Es öffnet einige dieser ethischen Mindfields, die viele Leute sagten, wow, das ist nicht unbedingt etwas, was du den Präsidenten der Vereinigten Staaten tun willst.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
In total, the NFDA thinks the cremation rate will hit 82% by 2045, up from just over 60% last year. It's a trend that has put the whole funeral industry at risk of dying out. When customers opt for cremation rather than a more involved funeral, it hurts their bottom line, leading many funeral homes to start to innovate and move more into the event planning space.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
For instance, one young hunter's family, the New York Times profile, opted for his cremated remains to be put into some shotgun shells for one last hunt. A service Hamilton funeral home in Des Moines helped facilitate. So Neil, there are really two trends emerging here. One, more people opting for cremation.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
And two, more funeral homes are coming up with creative ways to drive revenue to support their business.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Then, hope you don't mind Mr. Snuffleupagus coming to your Netflix and chill sessions because Sesame Street has a new home. It's Tuesday, May 20th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Yeah, there's one in Richland, Washington that has this airy 6,000-foot event center. It's got a patio. It's got this view overlooking kind of the PNW. And they have a menu, a catering menu. It's got a brisket buffet as well. And so rather than a traditional funeral parlor, they actually host 10 to 20 weddings there. a year at this place. So you are right.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Like it is this odd circle of life moment, but that has proved to be so popular that they're spending two and a half million dollars to renovate its next funeral home to also support events like this.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
So it's interesting how this trickle down effect of more people opting for cremation because of a variety of factors, not just economic, there is an environmental factor as well, has put these businesses in a much different calculus. And now they have to get super creative with how they can survive.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
No, Neil, this is a morning show. I said business suit, uncomfortable, outdated, and wildly impractical for the situation at hand. That's what using campaign based marketing feels like in 2025.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
I know. It just doesn't seem like the best, the most auspicious start to a marriage. But also, I guess if it was a beautiful space, then maybe you can overlook it. So I did think that was a little bit odd, but maybe just it is the circle of life and there is some good.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
So obviously it's down massively from its $6 billion valuation in 2021, but also it's up from its current market cap of $25 million. What was the purpose of buying this company? Regeneron actually beat out six other bidders. Clearly, this treasure trove of genetic data was something that a lot of people did find valuable. Again, it's down 95% from its peak, but it's also a
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
up 10x from what it's currently valued at. So it's just fascinating to see how there is still this very competitive demand for 23andMe's assets, despite the company never actually quite figuring out its profitable business model. Regeneron says we're going to use it to fund our own research because, yeah, genetic data is genetic data.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
The head of CBS News hit the exit yesterday, marking the second high-profile exec to leave the company as it stares down a $20 billion lawsuit from President Trump and an $8 billion merger. This time, it was Wendy McMahon tendering her resignation, writing in a memo, It's become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Her words echo those of 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens, who also left in April lawsuit. Neil, remember, this merger requires federal approval, so there has been internal pressure from CBS's parent company, Paramount, to not rock the boat too much. And that boat is one that high-level execs like McMahon and Owens don't want to be in anymore.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Speaking of chaos, Spain's housing market is in Spain without the S. It's staring down an affordability crisis that has caused thousands of Spaniards to take to the streets to protest rising costs. So how do you free up inventory quickly without building new units? Order Airbnb to block more than 65,000 listings on its platform, as Spain's consumer rights ministry did yesterday.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
As you would imagine, vacation rental homes are a big business in Spain. About 321,000 homes in Spain had holiday rental licenses, according to Reuters. That's 15% more than in 2020. This is a country in citywide crackdown we are seeing. Last year, Barcelona announced it will shut down all 10,000 short-term rental apartments by 2028 to protect housing for full-time residents.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
So, Neil, they're really pulling out all the stops here to try to free up some inventories.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
So instead of waiting three weeks for the Q3 summer sale email, you get a message when you actually need something.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
This was kind of scary because you see the footage and it seems so innocuous, but then you realize that these howler monkeys usually end up going on and dehydrating and dying. The trend appears to have been started by a monkey that the researchers nicknamed the Joker, which is this young male capuchin who has a small scar by the side of his mouth, aka the Joker. And
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
other monkeys seemed to observe the joker doing its thing and started mirroring the action back to him so it is just this weird part of monkey culture that these researchers have stumbled upon as they've been following around this troop for a while now and yeah they don't think they actually intend hending to harm these monkeys. But you are right.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
It is a uncomfortable mirror staring back at us, reflecting some of maybe the worst parts of human culture as well. So just a fascinating thing. These capuchins are a very smart and advanced species. The researchers have observed them using stone tools often throughout their research. So now they have this different and strange behavior that they've also picked up upon.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Yeah. Four main priorities here. Extend those tax cuts, introduce some of those new tax breaks that he campaigned on, boost some military and border spending, and then fourth, raise the debt ceiling so the government can continue to borrow money. And all of that is super expensive. So a lot of people are going, all right, How are we going to pay for the thing?
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
And the vast majority of it just won't be paid for. We're just kicking the can down the road once more. There are those cuts coming to Medicaid. There are those cuts coming to clean energy, among other areas. But this has created a problem within the Republican Party who... already holds a narrow majority because you have fiscal hawks that are saying, wait a second, why are we spending more?
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Why are we adding more to the deficit? Let's add some deeper spending cuts to this thing. And then also some Republicans in their own districts are saying, we don't want to cut Medicaid. These are our constituents here. We don't want to do that.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
And then others don't like the clean energy cuts, too, because, again, you are increasing costs for buying an electric vehicle for some of their constituents. And then probably the biggest... kind of hold up is one group that really wants to roll back a Trump tax hike, aka the salt deduction that would hits mainly affluent people living in blue states that came back in 2017.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
That would be an expensive change because that was one of the big tax hikes that did help offset some of the tax cuts in Trump's previous administration. So a lot of just nitty gritty things that are still to be worked out in this big, beautiful bill.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Let's move on. Every Sesame Street episode begins with a theme song, Sunny Day, which features the iconic line, Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street? Now that old question has a new answer. Log on to Netflix. The king of the streamers announced it had picked up the rights to Sesame Street yesterday, giving the kids show a new home after it had ended its partnership with Max late last year.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Despite shaping millions of children's vocabulary and math abilities for decades, Sesame Street has struggled to adapt to the streaming age. After more than 50 years as a PBS staple, the show struck a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery in 2016 to make the show available on its flagship streaming platform, Maxx.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
But as Wall Street soured on the chase for subscribers, the eye-popping price tag Warner Bros. paid for the right to air Sesame Street in the $35 million a year range suddenly seemed too expensive. So as Sesame Workshop has geared up to work on its 56th season, it's also been shopping around for a new home, one that Netflix was happy to provide given its broader push into children's content.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Netflix already holds the streaming rights to Miss Rachel and Cocomelon, two of the most popular children's YouTube channels. In 2021, it acquired the Roald Dahl Story Company, and now it's got Sesame Street in the fold. Neil certainly seems like it wants to make sure any byproducts of Netflix and chill sessions from nine months ago have some entertainment as well.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
I know. We were laughing at this because that actually does feel like a blissful little two moments of peace for you. But add in all those messages plus post-work messages, and we are experiencing 275 interruptions a day. No wonder you can't think. Some other data points just showing how scatterbrained we are in the modern workplace. 60% of meetings are ad hoc versus scheduled.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Yeah, it's not necessarily as lucrative for Sesame Street. The actual reports of the deal haven't come out yet, but a lot of people are saying it is well below that $35 million figure. This new deal brings new episodes to Netflix, PBS, and the PBS Kids app on the same day. The Max deal actually was less advantageous for Sesame Street, especially PBS, because
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Max would get the episodes months before they would actually air on PBS, its longtime home. So this kind of returns it to the status quo. You can just toss on PBS. You can find these episodes as they air. Netflix also gets them. So it's just broadening the reach of this iconic kids program, making less money, but also getting maybe a better distribution side of the equation.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
So it is good because Sesame Street was kind of lost in the shuffle of this very fast-changing TV landscape. It couldn't compete with Bluey, couldn't compete with Cocomelon in terms of streaming numbers. Now, potentially, this wider distribution will help cement it again as one of the apex shows of the children's streaming era.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Yeah, it is bleak out there because there's also some other forces that are making it hard for these towns to survive. One, federal funding to colleges is likely going to be cut under the current administration when there's no money that results in hiring freezes and layoffs. And then also,
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
some of these efforts to cancel student visas from students coming in from abroad also hurts these institutions because those students typically pay a higher out-of-state tuition. And then just in general, there are less young people flooding into the college system. In 2007, that was the peak of the U.S. birth rate. That's when 4.3 million Americans were born
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
And then edits in PowerPoint spike 122%. in the final 10 minutes before a meeting, so love all you procrastinators out there. Also, the messages do follow you home. Microsoft found that there's been a 15% year-over-year increase with messages outside the nine to five work hours, so anytime you feel like your work is chaotic or fragmented, you're probably right.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
And that has been falling steadily ever since then. So that's less kids entering middle school, entering high school, and therefore entering these college towns as well. So a lot of just factors converging to make these college towns kind of the center of this big demographic struggle.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Up next, let's dive into my Toby's trend. TastyTrade. We'll be right back.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Yes. One particular platform thinks I'm obsessed with Fabergé eggs.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
I have purchased over 17 Faberge eggs in the last two weeks.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
You can target buyers by industry, title, company, you name it. Everyone and their mom is on LinkedIn.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
LinkedIn will even 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. On today's edition of Toby's Trends, I want you all to take a moment to contemplate what's next. No, not your next meeting on your Google Cal or what you're having for dinner later.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
I'm talking about what's really next. Today's Toby's Trend is all about what happens right after you die. In the last few decades, the national cremation rate has soared since they are a lot more cost-effective for grieving families.
Morning Brew Daily
Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
Now, Microsoft tries to position AI as the answer and the solution to all of this, but I say the answer is go outside and take a walk without your phone. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, I want you to imagine something. Imagine you just jumped into the ocean wearing a full business suit. Full birthday suit? Sounds like that wedding I went to in Punta Cana.
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Netflix Saves ‘Sesame Street’ & College Towns Are Fading Away
According to the New York Times, the median cost of a direct cremation is $2,750 compared to $8,300 for a traditional package that includes a casket, viewing ceremony, and burial. The National Funeral Directors Association says the rise in cremation is also tied to things like environmental concerns and less religious customers who don't need or want heavily ritualized ceremonies.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
America's obsession with skincare is pushing many towards the field, while some poll factors include a more normal 40-hour workweek rather than the gut-wrenching hours required in other fields of medicine. And the pay is pretty nice as well. Dermatologists earn a median of $541,000 a year, according to a recent survey from the Medical Group Management Association.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Throw in a chance to build and monetize a following on social media, and it's not hard to see why the field is attracting more and more people. Neil, I feel like this is a confluence of a lot of trends. Young people looking for work-life balance, social media supercharging some careers, and people care more about their skin and well-being. A triple shot of Toby's trends.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
It certainly wasn't always that dermatology was a prestigious field. Early work of dermatologists was not glamorous at all. They tended to treat, you know, venereal diseases, syphilis that manifested on the skin. But it started attracting a lot more.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
more practitioners when you mentioned that 2002 when the FDA approved Botox for use, because now you are introducing medical treatments, but also cosmetic treatments. And so that opened it up to a new thing. And I mentioned the presence. You can't talk about dermatology without talking about social media.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Tons of these dermatologists have big followings on social media because skincare is just like the get ready with me phenomenon on TikTok. skincare is just so deeply ingrained in social media culture right now that you have the ability to build this following outside of your actual practice, which is very appealing to a lot of people.
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So I do just want to give dermatologists their shout out though. They're the first line of defense for a lot of people. A lot of things manifest on your skin. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States. So you can kind of have it all.
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
You can have the work life, you can have the good pay, you can have the social media following, and you can have that higher calling where you're actually helping people.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
It all evens out in the end. Now, a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
I mean, what this really shows is how many of these so-called separate brands actually rely on the exact same suppliers. I mean, Aldi, Kroger, Publix, Target, Trader Joe's, Walmart, Wegmans, Whole Foods, they all lead back to Grimway Farms just with different packaging. So we've seen this with some other of the E. coli outbreaks where waffles supplied by one manufacturer
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
made it into a bunch of different waffle brands. So what this is really showing is just how many of these brands are connected by single suppliers. In some Trump cabinet news, the president-elect chose Fox News contributor Sean Duffy to lead the Department of Transportation. For those keeping track at home, this is now the second time in two weeks that Trump has chosen
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
a Fox personality, to serve in his cabinet after he picked Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense. But Neil, Fox News isn't even Duffy's only TV experience. He also appeared on MTV's The Real World back in 1997. I should also mention
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
I think a lot of people can relate to that. Everyone wants to know where to put their money in the market, but most people resort to listening to their friends who, despite their best intentions, might not be the most informed stock pickers out there.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Okay, so I'm going to test you, Neil, and test you all listening at home. I have two haikus in front of me. One I wrote, and one was written by ChatGBT. So you're ready. Here's haiku number one. Toby lights the mic. Neil's banter sharp as sunrise. Morning brew, pure joy. That's haiku number one. And then here's haiku number two. I am a robot. A robot wrote this poem, Thoughtless Lines of Code.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So which one, haiku number one or number two, do you think was written by a robot?
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Finally, my fellow Floridians, cover your ears because Tropicana has changed its orange juice bottle again, and it stinks. The OJ maker recently ditched its iconic clear plastic carafe-esque bottles to introduce a more traditional look that is slimmer and a lot more boring.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Now, it's one thing to ditch the recognizable silhouette, but Tropicana also went and shrink-flated the bottle as well, and now only contains 46 ounces of juice down from 52. Say it with me, Neil. This new bottle stinks.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
I tell you what, Floridians, we are finicky when it comes to our Tropicana. We just want it to look the same and remind us of, you know, the burning orange peels that I smelled growing up every morning.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
You don't have to shun the group chat. Just make sure you're also looping in some Yahoo Finance in there to keep Jack from your freshman year co-ed flag football team honest.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So we know that 40% of adults under 30 get their news from news influencers. Let's bump that up to 45%, maybe 50%, by sending your favorite new influencers to them via this podcast.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Well, pour out a water the flight attendant charged you for because Spirit Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection yesterday after years of headwinds finally caught up to the budget airline. So many things had to go wrong to lead to this moment. A merger with JetBlue that fizzled in January, engine problems that grounded part of its fleet, an inability to operate profitably,
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
in a post-pandemic inflationary environment, that time when they said my carry-on bag was too big. These all contributed to $2.5 billion in losses over the past five years and a failure to turn a profit since 2019.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Marriott bag fiasco, obviously. It was clearly small enough to fit in the seat in front of me. No, it was a variety of things. Interestingly enough, though, demand wasn't really the issue. Spirit flew 2% more passengers in the first half of this year than in the first six months of 2023. But the airline took almost 20% less revenue per mile.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
It was just hard to compete with the industry writ large. It was kind of caught in what we call the messy middle. A lot of U.S. airlines offer that maximum cheapness ticket tier where it's very bare bones, no boarding fees. No boarding privileges and just very basic economy seats.
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
But it also couldn't compete at the higher end of the spectrum, too, with more luxury characters like Delta that people were clearly gravitating towards post pandemic. So it just was the worst of both worlds, even though more people were flying it. It just couldn't reliably charge those passengers enough money to operate profitably.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
It really was that Spirit was almost too powerful a force in the airline industry that ended up sinking it because Spirit pressured others to keep their fares lower, pressured others to innovate and offer those lower fares, and the fact that they could exert that pressure was part of the reason why the Justice Department...
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
overthrew a successful lawsuit that prevented the JetBlue Spirit merger on the grounds that losing Spirit would harm the consumer, losing Spirit's low fares would harm the consumer. But then everyone was saying, look down the road a little bit. Spirit is struggling. If we don't let this merger happen, you probably might lose Spirit to bankruptcy anyways.
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So it is one of those things where the Justice Department was right that Spirit is this – exerts this downward pressure on prices because of the fares it offers, but the fact that they blocked the merger made it so that Spirit has this murky path forward going into the future.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Then who is Brendan Carr, Trump's new pick to lead the FCC? It's Tuesday, November 19th. Let's ride.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Yeah, he's definitely, Carr is definitely an Elon guy. Carr wrote on X that we must dismantle the censorship cartel, and Elon immediately replied falsely. with one word of affirmation, he just said base to it. So they're clearly see free speech and see censorship the same way. You're right though.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Elon does stand to benefit Starlink and Starlink's rivals need FCC licenses in order to, you know, beam their internet down from satellites. Those frequencies are pretty, uh, oftenly hotly contested. So whatever the FCC decides can like make or break a company. Um,
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Elon has also kind of criticized Biden's $42.5 billion broadband expansion platform where they were using fiber optic cables to bring broadband internet to rural areas of America. He said, I could have done it better with Starlink. Carr sees it the same way. So a big winner here is Elon Musk for sure. Just in general, though, the FCC is typically a pretty low-key regulatory body.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
It emphasizes broadband internet deployment, which is not necessarily this very partisan thing. But Carr is much more interested in big tech, in censorship, and going after what he calls a censorship cartel.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
One name that we haven't mentioned when talking about big tech is TikTok. Carr is not a fan of TikTok. He supports the current efforts to ban TikTok in the U.S. He cites national security concerns, which could lead to some tension because Trump has kind of flip-flopped on that issue and said, I think TikTok should stay now.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So that is a potential battleground that might cause some friction between Trump and Carr. You are right, writ large, he is someone that big tech is probably a little bit nervous is coming down the pipeline, even though the FCC doesn't probably have the jurisdiction or the purview to really regulate it as Carr might hope to.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
Now let's talk about a recent Pew Research survey that shows just how much the news landscape has changed. Gone are the days where people's main source of news were talking heads on TV screens. Instead, Pew found that 1 in 5 Americans, nearly 40% of adults under 30, regularly get their news from influencers on social media.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
The survey talked to 10,000 adults and studied 500 news influencers with at least 100,000 followers to piece together people's news diets. And one big takeaway is that there is a huge gender gap. Of the influencers in the survey, a clear majority are men coming in at 63%.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
In terms of platforms, X is the most popular with 85% having a presence there, lapping Instagram, the second most popular, which is used by 50%. Neil, if you look at Legacy Media Network's falling ratings and the recent presidential election where the Joe Rogan experience and Caller Daddy both played major roles, a paradigm shift is clearly underway in the news game.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
And this Pew Research survey only serves to reinforce that.
Morning Brew Daily
Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
the rise of influencers back over a decade or so, almost 10 years ago. I remember Barack Obama made waves when he granted an interview to some major YouTube creators. At the time, it was this big deal that he was kind of giving a platform to these smaller YouTube creators.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
But then fast forward to this year and the Democratic National Convention credentialed 200 social media creators for their four-day event. The RNC also hosted more than 70 influencers. It's clearly part of the political playbook, at least at this point, to bring these influencers in because it's clearly where a lot of people under the age of 30 are getting their news from.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So it's just a totally different ballgame at this point. The research from Pew also dove into how different platforms attract different audiences. There's a much narrower gender divide on TikTok compared to all the other platforms. On most other platforms, news influencers who are male out... number of females two to one, but on TikTok, it's 51 male, 46% female.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
So it is interesting to see how different gender breakdowns stretch across platforms.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
What if you got the pay and the prestige of being a doctor, but without the insane working hours? Well, welcome to Dermatology, and welcome to Toby's Trends, where I unpack an emerging trend for you all to impress your friends with. Dermatology is the hottest new job in medicine, with residency applications for dermatology slots up 50% over the past few years, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Spirit Airlines Grounded by Bankruptcy & New FCC Threatens Big Tech
But here's something to remember. Over the course of the year, Utqiagvik will actually experience the exact same amount of daylight as any other place on Earth. So if we fast forward to May 11th, 2025, the sun will rise in Utqiagvik and it won't set until August 19th. So there is a life lesson in there somewhere, even though you might go through periods of extended darkness or extended sunshine.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
Either sleep in or go to this new brunch spot in the West Village.
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Forever 21 Goes Bankrupt & ChatGPT Can Have Anxiety?
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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. 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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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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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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Und das kam aus diesem großen Washington Post-Analys von ihrer Datenabteilung. Und sie haben einen Namen gefordert, den sie denken, ist anders, old-fashioned, aber nicht off-trend. Und das ist Sapience, was Wissens bedeutet. Also, wiederum, holt das Notes-App in euren Telefon. Ich weiß, dass jeder eine Liste von Babynamen hat, oder zumindest Leute meiner Alter.
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USPS Going Private? & SoftBank Makes $100B Bet on AI in America
Nehmt Sapience da rein, weil ihr könnt einen neuen Trend von Virtuenamen öffnen. Now, let's sprint to the finish with some headlines you may have missed. Up first, Donald Trump met with TikTok-CEO Zhou Zichu at Mar-a-Lago yesterday as the company tries to dance out of the potential nationwide ban it's facing.
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TikTok filed an emergency petition asking the Supreme Court to halt a law that would require ByteDance, its parent company, to sell the app by January 19th, arguing the ban infringes on its First Amendment rights. Trump... Ja, das ist nicht cool.
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Right, that's the problem. Trump's second term begins on January 20th. The deadline is set for January 19th, so how can he do much if he's not even inaugurated yet?
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Yeah, this is a cherry pick-off because Bernie and his committee thinks that the company had been cherry-picking stats to hide the fact that its warehouses are more dangerous than they might appear. And then Amazon pushed back and said, no, you're cherry-picking stats and especially people because... Have they ever heard of sampling?
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But yeah, you are right. And this is something that Amazon has been under intense scrutiny for years. There's another attorney from the Southern District of New York has been investigating allegations as well. So this isn't going away anytime soon. Apple thinks it's figured out a way to reverse flagging sales and it's origami.
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The biggest company in the world is reportedly developing two foldable devices. One, a giant foldable iPad that could unfold to the size of two iPad Pros. And the other, an iPhone model that would unfold to a size slightly larger than its current largest iPhone, the 16 Max.
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Jetzt, Apple hat ziemlich langsam in diesen Foldable-Markt eingestiegen, aber die aktuelle Foldable-Technologie hat ein Handy zu dick für Apple-Standards.
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Also hoffen wir, dass ihr slow und steady Approach mit einer geschlossenen Release-Date von 2026 bedeutet, dass ihr den Markt an der richtigen Zeit eingestellt habt, um seine Flaggen-Sales zu überwinden, die 2024 Revenue weniger als 1% erhöht haben. Neil, denken wir, dass Foldable-Handys Apple schützen werden?
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Yeah, they've for years tried to say you can replace your computer with your iPad, which is awkward messaging for a company that also sells, you know, laptops. I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of people have just been tired with Apple for not innovating enough recently. It's mostly been on the software side or when it comes to iPhones, just a camera update here and there.
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So they are trying to take bigger swings now and say, hey, you want something different? Here's a foldable phone. Here's a foldable iPad. Didn't really work with the headset. Yeah. Oh ja, die Vision Pro, das war ein großer Schwung und ein großer Miss. Also, ich meine, ich glaube, es ist besser, dass sie Schwünge nehmen. Ich weiß nicht, ob Foldable die richtige Richtung für sie ist.
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Now a word from our sponsor, Range Rover Sport. Neil, one thing about the Range Rover Sport is you're going to get a machine with exceptional balance.
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They do love to shop like a billionaire. Also, you look down all around the list. Amazon is number 20. So Taimou is definitely, you know, leaving them in the dust as well. There's a few interesting things about this year's top 10 list. You mentioned ChatGPT as the fourth most downloaded app. It is ahead of Google Search App. ChatDBT didn't make the top 10 last year.
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It only released in May on iPhone. So it is interesting to see how much that has shot up. And then one final name I want to call out here in the top 20 is Max. It's the only streaming service that made it on the list. Warner Bros. has low-key been having a really good back half of the year. I think it's on the back of the interest in Max. Only streamer in the top 20.
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So that's a name that they definitely like to see in that top 20.
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Okay, so it's Secret Santa season right now. So I want you to share the podcast with someone you definitely didn't forget to buy a gift for. Now you might think, hmm, a podcast as a gift. Well, to that I say, package it as giving the gift of staying up to date with the business world. Something that arguably is priceless and can even make you money. So maybe MBD for Secret Santa.
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I'm telling you, it could be the move.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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USPS Going Private? & SoftBank Makes $100B Bet on AI in America
Es ist schwer, weil der Postal-Service einer der amerikanisch am liebsten verehrten föderalen Agenzen ist. Es trägt nur den Nationalpark-Service in einem 2024-Research-Studium der am liebsten aussehenden Ausgaben auf diese Geräte. Aber es ist dieses Ziel geworden, insbesondere in dieser Ära der DOS-Gewerksfähigkeit, die wir in die Zukunft treten werden.
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It has been a popular target to potentially become privatized so it could save the government a little bit of money. The Postal Service is a loss-making machine. It lost $9.5 billion in the last fiscal year. It has $80 billion in liabilities on its balance sheet right now. So obviously it's going to come up as maybe a hot-button issue when you are trying to cut costs from the government.
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But it is one of those things that a lot of people rely on. So it's more complicated than just, oh, it's losing money, we need to do something about it. provides a very essential service for a lot of Americans.
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Then Germany is riding das Struggle Bus after its government collapsed under the weight of economic turmoil. It's Tuesday, December 17th. Let's ride.
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Let's talk a little bit about Amazon. Amazon is the Postal Service's largest customer. It uses it. Remember, Amazon is constantly trying to figure out last mile delivery. The Postal Service is its biggest way. It fulfills that last mile delivery going from fulfillment centers to your actual home. So, you mentioned the e-commerce industry.
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This would really disrupt it if you disrupt the Postal Service because it relies so much upon it. And so, yeah, I don't think that it's going to be popular with Amazon. Trump has in the past called out Amazon and said the Postal Service should double prices when it comes to Amazon because he had a feud with Jeff Bezos dating back to his last administration.
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We'll see if he kind of strikes a similar anti-Amazon tone here. hier in dieser nächsten Iteration von potenziell, weißt du, versuchen, den Postal Service privat zu bringen.
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Well, it's tough because you need the government to spend some money here. They're under a ton of pressure to spend on defense, on infrastructure, on social welfare, on getting your vaunted manufacturing industry back in its groove. But the problem with Germany is they're very austere. They have this actually debt break that is in their constitution, which effectively...
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Handstrings them of what they can do with their budget. Their debt cannot exceed 0.35% of GDP. So their hands are behind their back here. They can't do much to increase spending, increase spending from the government to try to reverse this doldrum it's been in. So I don't know what I would do. I would probably get ousted as well because there's just not an easy path forward here.
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Softbank-CEO Masayoshi Son never one to shy away from a big bet is doubling down on America. The mercurial Japanese tech investor announced a $100 billion investment in the U.S. over the next four years, making the pledge during a visit to President-elect Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate yesterday. Son loves putting a lot of his chips on red and white and blue.
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During the last Trump presidency in 2016, he pledged to invest $50 billion in the US economy and create 50,000 jobs. Well, he technically fulfilled that lofty financial obligation by the end of Trump's term. Nearly half of the money went into funding the office space startup WeWork, according to Axios. This time around, Sun and SoftBank have their sights set on the AI industry.
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and promised to work with Trump to create 100,000 jobs at a minimum related to artificial intelligence, data centers and chip manufacturing. Neil, Masayoshi's son is back and ready for round two.
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I've got some ideas. One of my favorite movies of all time is Mad Max Fury Road, which would undoubtedly slap in the IMAX format. But also thinking of good movies to re-release in IMAX is kind of boring. So my mind went to what would be the worst movie of all time to release in IMAX. And I think the answer has to be Cats.
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Ja, es ist ein bisschen unklar, von wo das Geld kommen wird. Viele Leute schauen das eher als eine mögliche PR-Serie, als eine aktuelle Veränderungs- und Investitionsstrategie, weil, weißt du, selbst im Jahr 2016 war SoftBank bereits in den USA, in den US-Firmen, das Vision-Fund zu deployen. Also macht man diese Erkennung, sind die Leute so, okay, du machst das bereits.
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Und es ist hier ähnlich, weil sie schon sehr viel in AI investiert haben. Sie hatten Pläne, noch tiefer zu gehen. Also nur neben Trump zu sitzen und das Erkennungsein zu machen, ist vielleicht mehr ein PR-Play. Das gesagt, hat Trump gesagt, dass er ein Fast-Track-Investment in die Vereinigten Staaten wollen.
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Er hat gesagt, dass jede Firma, die ein Billion Dollar oder mehr investiert hat, in den USA, Fast-Track-Permittungen erhalten würde. Also geht es auch mit seiner Agenda zusammen. Also Sie können sehen, dass beide Agendas hier verabschiedet waren. Sie wollten ein Headline in diesem Erkennungsein machen. Up next, it's Tuesday, which means it is time for Toby's Trends.
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Open up that Notes app on your phone where you keep track of baby names because today's Toby's Trend is all about the sudden resurgence of so-called virtue names. What are virtue names? Well, they're not Toby or Neil. Instead, think patience or prudence or chastity, you know, names that stem from traditional, often Puritan virtues. They used to be all the rage in the 90s.
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There are more American newborns with virtue names than in the 1780s. But according to a Washington Post analysis, we're still riding a virtuous name wave to this day. U.S. Women's National Team Goalie Hope Solo, former Trump Press Secretary Hope Hicks, NBA Journeyman Justice Winslow. The more you look, the more they start popping up.
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Originally popular in Puritan times, the more modern appeal of virtue names isn't reflective of a sudden renewal of religious vigor. Instead, the booms can be traced back to pop culture. The sitcom Will & Grace, which originally ran in 1998 to 2006, for instance, coincided with the rise in babies named Grace.
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While names like Faith saw a boost after George Michaels' album of the same name sold 25 million copies. I know you like that. Yeah. Neil, any harmonies or serenities in your life?
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I mean, the movie adaptation of the Broadway musical that catified everyone from... Ja, ironisch gesagt. Hast du einen Film, den du rereleasten möchtest?
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Und dann kannst du es auch zu einigen moderneren Namen tracken. Ich meine, der Wachstum des Country-Singers Faith Hill hat viele Leute mit dem Namen Faith genannt. Es gab auch einen Charakter namens Faith in der TV-Serie Buffy, der Vampir-Slayer. Chastity hat sich eigentlich nach Sonny und Cher ausgelöst und hat es für ihr Kind gekauft.
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Aber ehrlich gesagt, viele dieser Vertue-Namen können auch zu einer anderen Erklärung getrackt werden, und das ist, dass Namen, die in Y beendet werden, viel trendiger geworden sind. Also Harmony, Serenity. Die meisten üblichen Beendungen für Vertue-Namen sind in Y beendet, und die Namen, die in Y beendet werden, erleben einen der größten Boom in den Dekaden.
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Also vielleicht ist es weniger, dass sie Vertue-Namen sind, und mehr, dass sie einfach in Y beenden. Tobi, Neely, nein, nicht wirklich.
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Caviar is having a bit of a moment, finding itself on dishes far beyond the scope of creme fraiche and crackers. Despite its air of luxury, caviar has gotten a lot more affordable recently. Accurate data is a little hard to come by, but the average price for a kilogram of imported caviar was around $240 in 2020, down from $440 in 2014, according to a European fish observatory.
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The big reason for this? China. Today, most of the little fish balls that cross your palate come to the US from farms in China, where government support, plentiful waterways, and cheap labor have pushed down prices. Retailers say that they can snag a kilogram for as low as $400 now. Compare that to a U.S.
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producer, Marshallburg Farms, who supplies caviar to a luxury hotel who says its break-even cost is $1,000 to $1,200 a kilo. But thanks to this flood of cheaper eggs, restaurants have started getting fancy with the ingredient. Kokodak, a Korean fried chicken restaurant in New York City,
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slaps a healthy dollop on top of a McDonald's-style chicken nugget, while you can get a $68 sour cream and onion dip in Nashville adorned with the fancy orbs. Neal, it's all combined to push this once unattainable symbol of luxury into the mainstream dining experience.
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And I think even though caviar is cheaper now, diners are willing to still play a premium because they're really not thinking about it that much. In their minds, they still think caviar equals luxury. So they're like, of course it's expensive here if menu prices are high.
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And also, despite this big ascendancy of Chinese caviar coming into the United States, a lot of importers don't really directly specify the country of origin. And then also, if you go to a retailer website – this is very funny –
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You can see that caviar was harvested in the immaculately clean waters of the Thousand Islands Lake, which doesn't explicitly mention China, but it actually is just referring to a lake in China. So there's just creative ways that importers get around saying that this was imported from China by making it seem like the luxury good that it has been for so long.
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Also, I just think it's fun how chefs are playing around with it because... Coca-Dac on the chicken nugget is very interesting. There's another place in New York City that puts it on little hot dogs, so a little hot dog in caviar combo. And then another restaurant was just serving straight up bumps of it straight off your hand for $20. And they're like, this is a great Instagram sensation for us.
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People post it. It's fun. It's more like marketing for us. We don't care if we make a profit or not on it. We just want to bring people in with this allure of caviar.
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I mean, going through this story and looking at the movie names, I'm part of the problem because I have never heard of the new Thriller Drop or Disney's spy movie, The Amateur. These are names that just never even crossed my marketing consciousness. And a lot of it is really hurting theaters, too, because right now the movie industry is struggling to come out of its pandemic slump.
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Box office revenue, first three months of the year, was the lowest it has been, excluding the pandemic, since 1996. So, again, I understand the pinch that movie studios are in right now because all of us are saying we do not want another Marvel movie. Give us something new. and then they give us something new, and then we don't go and see the movie. So it is this kind of catch-22.
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And again, I'm totally part of the problem because I'm not seeing the drop. I'm not going to see the amateur. Don't be hard on yourself. It's not your fault.
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Three movies that I do want to call out, though. Apple Studios bet big on F1, which is this very immersive take on the F1 sport with Brad Pitt as a race car driver. You've seen him kind of trapezing around the paddock in real races, so that's a big original bet. And then you also have... Sinners from Warner Bros. starring Michael B. Jordan.
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That's a big bet from Ryan Coogler, which I think has the possibility to go well. And then one final kind of, it's not necessarily an original movie, but it's also not a sequel. And that's Thunderbolts from Marvel, which focuses on this very little known superhero IP. And I think maybe that is the path forward.
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Find unique original stories within these very well-known universes, almost like an original, but with enough familiarity. to bring people in. So maybe that is kind of like this undetermined third category that could bring people back to the movies.
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Even though Harvard is making headlines right now, this is not the first higher education versus Trump administration fight that we've seen. After the Trump administration said it was freezing $400 million in federal funding to Columbia, the school agreed to a variety of conditions. Those involved banning masks, expanding campus police powers, and then also banning
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Assuming you can pay it off, it is savvy, Neil. Look at you, Neil, encouraging people to live in the moment. Now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you know what makes the foundation of a good relationship?
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appointing a senior vice provost to oversee their Middle East, South Asian, and African studies department. So this was obviously Harvard is just a big name, big brand, and $9 billion at the line is why this is making headlines. But the higher ed versus current administration showdown is something that we're going to see continue to play out.
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If you're trying to hire for your startup or find a date, you could log onto a dating app or fire up LinkedIn, or you could do it the old-fashioned way. handwriting a note and leaving it in a self-driving car. Waymo people are using Waymo to try and source talent and love these days.
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One startup founder was out visiting SF and thought the center console of her self-driving ride was the perfect place for a little guerrilla marketing. Looking to hire senior software engineers to work at an AI slash music project, she scrawled on a piece of paper. The mixing of futuristic tech and good old-fashioned hustle resonated.
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Someone posted the note on X. It got nearly 400,000 views, and as a result, the founder has 60 resumes waiting in her inbox to comb over. Neil, this mixing of approaches, aggressively analog communication mixed with aggressively future-looking transportation seems to have resonated with people.
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And I mentioned that it's also people looking for love. Another guy, a bachelor, left a note in the backseat of his Waymo saying that, hey, I'm a 26-year-old. I'm single. I work in tech, but I don't make it my whole personality. Here's my name and number. And he got a lot of replies as well.
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So I think right now we're in the honeymoon stage of like, oh, this is like a fun little guerrilla marketing. I'm glad that you're putting yourself out there. But Yeah, if we start seeing it kind of abused and abused, I think Waymo's going to crack down on people leaving these handwritten notes. Finally, the WNBA draft was last night, which means that the Paige Beckers era has officially arrived.
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To the surprise of no one, the UConn star was taken number one overall by the Dallas Wings, kicking off her professional career after amassing an all-time collegiate resume. In 2021, Beckers was the first freshman to win the Naismith Trophy, the highest individual award in college basketball. Then she battled through injuries, but Beckers took the Huskies to four Final Fours when she was healthy.
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And last season, she averaged nearly 20 points to bring home one more championship to the storied program. What's next? She enters a league that is very much in its Caitlin Clark era. After a season where every team's highest attendance came when Clark rolled into town, the Fever star wanted the Wings to get out ahead of Beckers' madness.
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Sage advice for sure. But I add one more thing in there. You have to also make each other better. It's why Planet Oat has the best relationship with your morning brew.
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You know, honestly, they should move every game to American Airlines, the arena where the NBA's Dallas Mavericks play, Clark said. because I think Paige has that type of draw. You know, the first time these two match up, it's going to be appointment television.
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Rich, creamy, smooth, and delicious, it brings out the best in everything, whether you're blending a smoothie or drinking it straight from the glass.
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And just for good measure, it's also an excellent source of calcium.
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Don't settle for less than perfect. Pick something that will make your life better. Visit planetoat.com for more. The most valuable chip maker on Earth just made a very pro-American manufacturing move. Nvidia announced yesterday that it's bringing over a million square feet of AI chip manufacturing to U.S. soil, ramping up operations in Arizona and Texas.
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The company's next-gen Blackwell chips are already in production at TSMC's FABs in Phoenix, while new supercomputer factories are being built in Houston and Dallas. Within four years, Nvidia says it's directing $500 billion worth of AI infrastructure spend towards the good old USA. But beneath the bold promises of bringing manufacturing back, made in USA is easier said than done.
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The US lost its manufacturing dominance decades ago, not just because of globalization, but because Americans got wealthier, started spending more on services, and lost their knack for mass production. Factory employment peaked in the 1950s, but today,
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Only 1 in 10 private sector workers are in the sector, while only 1 in 5 Americans think their life would be better off working in a factory, according to a Cato Institute YouGov survey. Still, as NVIDIA announcement shows, high-value manufacturing in industries like chip fabrication and aerospace engineering still has an avenue to thrive here.
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The FT writes that when measured by value added per worker, U.S. manufacturing actually ranks first amongst the major economies above China, which is why the push to reshore manufacturing is more complicated than it seems. No one wants to force the return of a labor-intensive industries through tariffs, especially if it hurts services or raise prices.
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But Neil, Nvidia's move does show what modern onshoring can look like.
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Yeah, and it's just hard to compel these companies to set up factories in America just by raising import duties. One, because the cost of moving production to the US is very high. You need labor, first of all, which is more expensive in the United States. You also need... a lot of capital to build these billion dollar factories.
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Dan Ives, famous Wedbush analyst that we cite a lot, estimated that Apple would need at least three years and $30 billion just to shift a 10th of its supply chain from Asia to the US. So that is one other force that is kind of, it's a major headwind because you need just so much time. You need so much money.
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Nvidia is saying that it's willing to, you know, put the time in, put the money in, but it doesn't work for, every company up and down the supply chain.
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Then remember to peel the Made in America sticker off your new supercomputer. NVIDIA announced yesterday it'll start making AI chips in the U.S. of A. It's Tuesday, April 15th. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Tuesday.
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Yeah, you want a little bit of uncertainty because Goldman acts as a middleman in trades, buying from one party, selling to another. And so the more uncertainty means more trades, which means more spreads, which means more revenue for them. When markets are calm, people trade less.
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But then when Trump shakes up trade policy, traders are constantly repositioning here, buying protection, rotating sectors. hedging exposure. So that chaos leads to pretty record trading volumes, which is, you know, good fees for Goldman. So you're right. It's this weird balance between you do need a little bit in there, but you don't want too much.
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Neil, my Instagram feed has been filled with Coachella goers this past week as hundreds of thousands flocked to the California desert to rub shoulders with Timothée Chalamet and spend $650 a pop on a ticket. And if you're thinking to yourself as your fingers tap through yet another story of Lady Gaga's set, dang, do all my friends got it like that?
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They're not, they meaning big bank CEOs, are not completely writing off kind of their investment banking activities division, though. On Friday, Morgan Stanley, CEO of Ted Pick, said that he believes deals are on pause, not delete. So they're holding out hope that this paralysis that is currently gripping the industry is not going to be a long-term thing. It's just going to be a short-term thing.
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And then in the meantime, I think they're happy to reap these fees from increased volatility in their trading departments.
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I mean, the memes yesterday were fantastic. You have to make Katy Perry getting off the spacecraft and kissing the Earth, holding a daisy up, you know, singing up there, serenading her fellow crew members. That obviously generated a lot of the headlines. I also saw some of this... was rubbing people the wrong way.
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One, because making a big deal out of it at all was something that people are like, we don't need to do that anymore. You know, the first female flight, all female flight was 62 years ago. Eileen Collins was the first female shuttle commander 26 years ago. Peggy Whitson became the first female commander of the International Space Station 18 years ago.
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She's also the record holder for most time spent in space. So a lot feel that women, real astronauts have obviously been pushing the boundaries far more than this Blue Origin fight. So why did we need to make such a big deal out of this? But then also a lot of astronauts saw merit in the flights that Blue Origin is making. A retired astronaut, former ISS commander Terry Virch told Time that
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Space tourist flights like Blue Origin's New Shepard are positive in so many ways. They support the burgeoning commercial space industry and they allow more humans to see our beautiful planet from outer space.
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The answer is probably no, they do not got it like that. According to a Billboard report, more than half of all general admission attendees bought their tickets through payment plans this year. Back in 2009 when the festival first launched its payment plan program, 18% of attendees used it. Now that number is around 60%. Recession indicator, Neil, just bad money management or worth it?
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But I think worth it for the memes, Neil. Worth it for the memes.
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Even though the days are warming up, cooler nights are still ahead. Whether you're snuggling with pets or just unwinding after a long day at work, layer up with Brooklinen's Dreamwave Waffle Bed Blankets and Ribbed Mateluse Quilts.
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Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
Wise Business provides you with one account for all your international business finances. You can pay vendors, suppliers and manage expenses in over 40 currencies.
Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
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Morning Brew Daily
Nvidia To Make AI Supercomputers in Texas & Goldman Sachs Cashes In for Q1
If you're tired of paying for overpriced eggs from chickens, may I interest you in overpriced eggs from a different species, maybe some that have been cured in salt and come from a sturgeon? Yes, today, I wanna talk about the rise of slimy, briny caviar on today's edition of Toby's Trends.
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Ghost jobs are roles that companies toss up on jobs boards and advertise online. Aber sie haben keine wirkliche Intention, sie zu füllen. Durch das Estimat von Hiring-Plattformen Greenhouses, sind diese Arbeiten für bis zu 22% aller Arbeiten, die online veröffentlicht werden. Aber warum haben Unternehmen Arbeiten mit wenig Intention, sie zu füllen?
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Ein potenzieller Grund ist, dass sie es so machen, als wären sie noch wach, auch wenn sie es nicht sind. Ein anderer Grund, warum sie die Fischereien auslösen, ist der dünne Wunsch, einen Albatross-Führer zu finden, Oh, sag mir das.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Was mich am meisten aufregt, ist, dass alle diese toxischen Philadelphia-Fans plötzlich die positivsten, selbstbewussten Leute werden, weil sie AJ Browns Fortschritte folgen werden. Ich bin einfach glücklich für die Stadt Philadelphia. Vielleicht werden sie eigentlich ihren Namen als Stadt der brüderlichen Liebe leben. Jetzt ein Wort von unserem Sponsor, public.com.
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Yeah, one of the craziest reasons why companies do this is to instill fear in their current employees. 62% of respondents to a survey said that they posted ghost jobs expressly to make their employees feel, quote, replaceable. So you're trying to create this sense of unease if you are an employee and you see... Vielen Dank. Ja, genau.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Ja, bis 2040 werden alle Babyboomers, die älteste Generation jetzt, mindestens 75 Jahre alt sein. Und das ist ein Alter, nach dem die Diagnose von Dementia wirklich substanziell erhöht ist. Also, du hast recht, es ist eine älteren Bevölkerung. Aber dann auch das schifftere raciale Make-up der US-Population.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
As a CEO of a major company, words like disastrous are not something you want associated with your tenure. But Patrick Spence, the now former CEO of Sonos, can't seem to escape the word. Spence resigned yesterday as CEO of the high-end audio company following a disastrous app redesign back in May of last year that baffled consumers as to just how bad it was. The new app was buggy.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Das war's für heute. Bis zum nächsten Mal.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Neil, erinnerst du dich, als TV-Remotes 45 Knöpfe hatten, die nicht funktionierten? Ja, das mache ich. Well, old school investing platforms are kind of like that. But public, it's like having the ultimate universal remote.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
The chief product officer, though, that was behind the rollout of the app is still on board, though. So a lot of people internally are grumbling like, it's not just the CEO's fault. This guy is still there as well and led kind of the worst app redesign in history. So Tom Conrad does have his work cut out for him. But yeah, co-creator of Pandora Music Service.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
That is someone who I'd want in charge of my company because that Das war großartig, als es herausgekommen ist. Walmart hat sich einen Facelift bekommen. Es hat gestern ein Refresh-Logo entdeckt, ihr erstes signifikantes Branding-Update in fast 20 Jahren. Das neue Design bezieht sich auf eine schmalere, schwarze Farbe, zusammen mit einer tiefen blauen Farbe, um mit ihrem fremden Jelen zu gehen.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
There will also be a greater emphasis on its yellow Spark logo as a stand-alone asset. The redesign is part of Walmart's strategy to position itself as a tech-driven omnichannel retailer, because nothing says tech-driven omnichannel retailer like a slightly bolder typeface. Overall, this is more of an update than a big revamp.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
The brand still looks very similar, which is probably a good thing because business is booming for Walmart right now. Sales at its US stores grew about 5% last quarter compared with the year prior, outpacing rivals like Target.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
It certainly is. It didn't reinvent the wheel here. But I will say it is good. Boulder is better. I like the deeper blue a little bit like that. But I think they are doing it in order to tell the story that, hey, we are this new omni-channel retailer. We do have a very big online business. So let's do a slight logo tweak, a slight color update to let people know that we are a new Walmart.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
And their AI assistant alpha is like having a personal investment channel guide, giving you insights on any stock you're curious about.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
So yeah, it's not all about the actual visual interpretation of the business. Part of it is the brand storytelling as well.
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Ich mag es. Es ist ein kleiner Zweck, aber ich stimme dir zu. Ich denke, es sieht besser aus.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
It doesn't feel like enough. 400 million people is just so hard to wrap your mind around. Obviously it's bigger than the entire US population, but also that is 200 times... die 2 Millionen Menschen, die die typischen Pilgrimages zu muslimischen heiligen Städten von Mecca jedes Jahr machen. Also 400 Millionen Menschen ist nur eine große Menge von Menschen.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Es hat mich auch gedacht, was ist die größte Masse der Menschheit, die ich je gesehen habe? Und ich denke, es war der New York Marathon letztes Jahr. Das sah wie eine logistische, du weißt, eine verrückte Sache auszulösen, mit nur dieser großen Menge von Port-au-Pottys. Das waren nur 50.000 Menschen. Also ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, was die Port-au-Pottys-Linien sind.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Look like at this festival.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
To upgrade your investment experience, check out public.com slash morningbrew. It's investing made easy. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
I want you to share the podcast with someone who could work on their inner excellence. Maybe send them the book and then also send them this podcast episode to go alongside of it. It is a great one to punch.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Yeah, people are pretty desperate to get into a house right now. So a lot of them just end up throwing money at a place. They'll go see any place just to get a roof over their head. And of course, unfortunately, you have people taking advantage of this, despite what California laws actually say. And you mentioned that. Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Los Angeles. Vielen Dank.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Then people are finally revamping their wardrobes and retailers like Lululemon and Abercrombie are cashing in. It's Tuesday, January 14th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Yeah, there's definitely some question marks about LA 2.0 because the group behind the Olympic Games has set a budget of around $7 billion. Taxpayers, though, would be on the hook if you do go above for any cost overruns above that $7 billion threshold. So that...
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
obligation and the fact that maybe taxpayers could be on the hook for even more costs in the future, even as they're trying to rebuild, has called some, has prompted some people to say that LA should pull itself out of the Olympics. They have enough to deal with with rebuilding from these fires.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Maybe the International Olympic Committee isn't something that they need to deal with at the current moment. And then not even to mention the World Cup that comes even before the Olympics in 2028. So LA 2.0 is going to Wir haben einige Herausforderungen, aber schon Gavin Newsom und viele in Kalifornien schauen voran, um herauszufinden, wie man von dieser Tragödie nach vorne gehen kann.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Die Leute sind endlich in ihren Covid-Ära-Schmerzen für neue Genos zu handeln und die Verkäufer investieren. Lululemon und Abercrombie haben gestern leckere Einkäufe erhoben, mit beidem ihre Guidanz für das Jahr voran zu erheben, mit der Vorstellung, dass die Verkäufer in das neue Jahr investieren werden.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Credit-Card-Networks corroborated this, seeing a jump in clothes shopping with Visa and Mastercard, both reporting an over 5% bump in the category over the holiday period. But a solid quarter wasn't enough to impress Wall Street. Lulu and Abercrombie ended up trading lower yesterday, with Abercrombie falling as much as 18%. Neal, People are trying to get their style identities back.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Anecdotally, NBC talked to a few personal stylists who have said that they are hearing more clients ask for back-to-office outfits. One stylist NBC talked to estimated that a quarter of new clients are coming in, asking her for help putting together an outfit for work. I think we could use a little help as well, Neil, looking at... Aaron Mago is not doing... They're not doing their job.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
It is interesting though, because I said that a lot of those companies reported strong earnings, but you saw their stocks fell. Abercrombie is one of those big names that fell a lot yesterday. And it's almost like they're a victim of their own success. They have had... Bis zum nächsten Mal. Vielen Dank.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Diese niedrigen, nicht auslösen, wie wir es vor Covid gesehen haben, aber immer noch Auslösen, während die Leute versuchen, ihre Wardroben zu refreshen.
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Before he can start take office and start raising tariffs on China, a lot of brands and companies imported goods to get out ahead of those tariffs. So that led to a new single month record surplus of $104 billion. It is just truly domination at this point. Some of the industries that China dominates the most are things like cars, solar panels.
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
They have been flooding the global market with these things, leading to an economic bonanza for the country, but also potentially it's too much of a good thing, depressing some of the prices of these cheap goods. It has led to...
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
A rising tide floats all boats within the country though, because exports create jobs not only in the factories, but also you have to have these high earning designers, these high earning engineers, research scientists as well. So it really has been an economic boom for China. Of course it's going to be a boom, because when you're running this much of a surplus.
Morning Brew Daily
LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
Neil, Neil, Neil. I was never on the bench with time to read a book. I actually did have a book, though. I used to read Inner Game of Tennis before every soccer game because one of my assistant coaches gave it to me before one of my first starts ever. I scored a goal in that game, so then it just became a ritual beforehand.
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LA Wildfire Victims Fight Price Gouging & RTO Brings Fresh Office Fits
A job listing that looks too good to be true. An application sent off into the void with no response. A sneaking suspicion that maybe this job opening isn't even real. If you've applied to a job in recent years, you may have been haunted by so-called ghost job posting. And it's these rise of spooky listings that I want to talk about on today's edition of Tobi's Trends.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, you're in the dating pool. Ever try texting someone who only replies every third Tuesday?
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Join now at join.whoop.com slash brew daily. That's join.whoop.com slash brew daily. So I know a lot of you guys listen to the podcast while on your commutes, which thank you. Hope you're not too stressed coming into work. But this edition of Toby's Trends goes out to all you remote employees out there who, even without a commute, are more stressed than you might expect.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
New data from Gallup shows that remote workers represent a bit of a paradox. Fully remote employees are actually more engaged at work than their in-person or hybrid counterparts, with 31% reporting higher levels of enthusiasm for their work and connection to the organization compared to their hybrid and fully in-office counterparts.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Part of the reason for this higher engagement is that they have more autonomy over their workday, which allows them to use their time more efficiently. But a downside to that autonomy is that they are more stressed out, too. remote workers are more likely to feel negative emotions like anger, sadness, and loneliness compared to people who go into an office.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Nearly half said they felt a lot of stress recently, more than the 38% of onsite workers. And that's true controlling for how much money they make as well. So combine all that data and it shows how working fully remote can lead to higher highs and lower lows compared to going into an office or having a mix of both. So Neil, thank goodness we're doing this podcast in person.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
And Gallup kind of called out some of those stressors. A lot of them have to do with the fact that distance makes things more difficult for some employees. Remote work feels like just work because you don't get any of the friendship. You don't get any of the shared meals. You don't get any of the banter that you have with your co-workers as well.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
So that isolation can increase that feeling of loneliness as well. And then also I mentioned the autonomy piece, which is why there's this paradox, because If you do feel autonomy over your work and you can dictate how you spend your workday, you probably do get more done. You can enter a flow state more easily. But also that is stressful for a lot of people.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
But your customers don't live on a marketing calendar. They live in the moment. They buy when they're ready, not when your Q3 campaign says it's time.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
There's a reason why, you know, not everyone is an entrepreneur. Some people just want to know what they have to do today. They don't want to. too much ownership because then it feels like the whole world is on your shoulders, especially when you're alone. So that autonomy can be a two-sided sword as well.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
And then obviously too, technology is just frustrating as well because everyone's tried to been on a Zoom call before, it's not working and you just feel like, oh, why can't I just do these things in person? So those are a few of kind of the triggers that Gallup called out as reasons that remote workers are feeling these increased levels of stress.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
And Trump signed an executive order asking for lower drug prices, but asking and getting might be two different things. It's Tuesday, May 13th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Pack the Twizzlers and fill up the cooler with Mountain Dew. It is road trip time, baby. A record 39.4 million Americans are expected to hit the road this Memorial Day weekend to travel by car, up 3.1% from last year and the most in 20 years, according to AAA.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Just 3.6 million people, on the other hand, plan to fly, which is up a mere 1.7% from last year. The reasons people are channeling their inner rascal flats in treating life like a highway are plentiful rising economic uncertainty, higher living costs, gas prices near a four-year low, combined with flight prices and flight anxiety rising means a lot more Americans are hitting the roads.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Neil, going to be a busy one out there.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
You're advocating for finding more efficient routes, not speeding, though, Neil. Of course.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Whether a customer just opened your app, abandoned the cart, or heck, just ghosted you, Iterable's AI triggers the right message right then, no waiting around.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Yeah, news you can use right here. You can go and file a claim online. You're probably not gonna get a hefty chunk of change because it's about 20 bucks per connected device. So you can gather up to $100 from this claim, but that only, you know, happens if you own five Siri-connected Apple devices, which actually maybe a lot of us have.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
I mean, I got an Apple Watch and a computer in front of me, so I'm almost half the way there already. But yeah, you can submit this claim. This kind of came through the pipeline with Apple denying everything but wanting to settle it and just kind of get it out of the way because this is not a massive number, but still...
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Something to, if you want a little nice dinner later in the year, maybe submit a claim and try to get your $100.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
I mean, let's just go through some of the recent draft outcomes over the years. LeBron leaves Cleveland. The Cavs get the first pick and get Kyrie. Anthony Davis leaves New Orleans. Pelicans get the first pick and get Zion. Mavs trade Luka. Get the first pick and land flags. I'm not saying anything.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
It just seems like any time a blockbuster trade sends one major superstar to another market, they seem to get the number one pick directly after. So, again... I'm not saying anything, but... You're just asking questions. I'm just asking questions here. Speaking of basketball, time to reopen the GOAT debate because Michael Jordan is coming back to the NBA.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
No, he's not suiting it up for the Wizards, though. He could probably break into their starting five. He's been hired as a special contributor for NBC beginning next fall as a network who brought us buh-buh-buh-buh-buh basketball leans further into 90s nostalgia. Neil, NBC last aired the leak in 2002. Jordan last suited up in 2003. So they're trying to harken back to the glory days with this hire.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
I just wonder how he's going to do in the booth without Scottie Pippen.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Have they seen the Morning Brew social media accounts? I mean, come on.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Yeah, still the sigh of relief is coming as the U.S. tariff rate is now just 17.8%, the highest since 1934. So people are celebrating returning to literal Smoot-Hawley level tariffs right now. And the big question was, was this even really hurting China beforehand? A little bit. Chinese shipments of goods to the U.S. dropped 21% from a year earlier.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
in as a result of the increased tariffs but then you look at where beijing was sending other goods and you see that their exports to the block of south asia southeast asian nations surged 21 so 21 lower to the united states 21 higher maybe they were finding demand elsewhere obviously the u.s is their biggest trade partner so it's not a like for like sort of thing that
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
all that being said, though, this does seem like a dream scenario because just a few days ago, Trump was suggesting that 80% tariffs was where things were going to normalize. 30% is obviously a lot lower than that. So all things being considered, you could see why it was a very green day on Wall Street yesterday.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Yeah, the dollar and bond yields also rose as well. Now there's this expectation that the U.S. will grow faster once again now that these trade tensions have died. And if you look at the odds of a recession, too, on Polymarket, on Kalshi, those dipped below 40% for the first time since back in April.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
So it really is just, I mean, sigh of relief is the word that you keep hearing here because it did come out a little bit softer than people expected. Like, This level of thawing was not necessarily something that people thought was going to happen when Scott Besant entered Geneva to do those talks over the weekend. So a lot of just people going, whew, is not the worst case scenario.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
We're in a manageable position now.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Drug pricing has long been a controversial aspect of the American healthcare system, one that President Trump is targeting with an equally controversial policy. Yesterday, he signed an executive order that, amongst other things, brings back the most favored nation policy when it comes to drug pricing. Basically what we're doing, Trump said to the press on Monday,
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
We will get whoever is paying the lowest price, and that's the price we're going to get. The proposed policy gives pharmaceutical companies price targets to reach over the next 30 days, with the goal of ending what Trump describes as systemic overcharging of Americans. The data does back up what he's saying. The U.S.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
paid nearly three times as much for all drugs in 2022 compared to other wealthy developed nations and over three times more for brand name medications, according to the Rand Corporation. The pharma industry pushed back on the law, saying that any threats to their profits could impact the money they put into R&D to create new drugs down the line. Initially, shares of U.S.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
drug makers like Pfizer and Eli Lilly fell yesterday in pre-market trading, but then came roaring back throughout the day, mainly because the order cites no obvious legal authority to mandate lower prices, according to the New York Times. Plus, hours before Trump's announcement, Congress proposed $700 billion in health care cuts, but didn't touch drug prices.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
So, Neil, not quite as toothy as some pharma execs were expecting, but it's clear Trump wants to try and bring the U.S. in line with other countries when it comes to drug pricing.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
I think so. Actually, I love the idea of a of a Wednesday movie because I also love the idea of a solo movie night. I've done one of those recently and it just I don't know. It's just a time for yourself. But I think AMC needs this. Their first quarter admissions revenue fell almost. 11% from a year earlier. Outside the pandemic, it was their worst first three months of the year since 1996.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Let's talk about the motivation behind it, though. So Trump said that even though the United States is home to only 4% of the world's population, pharma companies make more than two thirds of their profits in America. That is not a good thing. And drug makers do make a substantial amount of their profits worldwide from sales in the United States.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
They typically design their entire business strategy around the U.S. market. And so what are some of the outcomes if suddenly most favorite nation policy does come into play? One outcome is drug makers just leave, facing a choice between making cuts to their pricing in the U.S. or the loss of super profitable or not super profitable overseas market.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
They might just leave some of those overseas market and just abandon them altogether, which obviously isn't a great outcome for the people living in those countries. Right.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Yeah, this makes sense given Trump's transactional approach to foreign policy in general because in Trump's eyes, these states have a lot to offer him. One, they're pledging to invest literally trillions of dollars in the U.S. economy. That's been a theme throughout Trump's early presidency so far. They also pledged to spend a lot of money on U.S. weapons systems as well.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
So they're pulling all the levers that they can to try to get people to come out. That being said, AMCCO Adam Aran said that their first quarter was an anomaly and they're already seeing people start to come back to the movies. So maybe you just need a lot of teenagers who love screaming chicken jockey rather than any big promotion to bring people back to the theaters.
Morning Brew Daily
Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
This is a very carefully crafted strategy from those Gulf states to try to, you know, woo Trump to maybe get some extractions and benefit for themselves as well. So they are seeing this as almost like a once in a lifetime opportunity to have a U.S. president come in to try to, you know, land things like security packs that Saudi Arabia wants with the United States.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
So it's definitely a mutually beneficial relationship where they think they can solve a lot of win-win issues.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
And it's in direct opposition to one of Trump's stated goals, which is to bring down the price of oil as well. So that is a point of tension between the two nations. But as we saw him land this morning, it looks to be a very chummy relationship. I mean, they literally had horses escorting his limo as he entered, you know, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
So definitely not a relationship that is too strained or too tense right now because clearly the two leaders get along. Up next, we have Toby Strands. Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion. Without them, we'd be lost, literally and figuratively.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
Wise helps you manage your business's finances in 40-plus currencies, all with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs. It's fast, too. Sounds like a business's best friend. To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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Markets Rally On US-China Deal & Big Pharma Grapples with Price Cuts?
This episode is brought to you by WHOOP. The all new WHOOP is here. The only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance. Now 7% smaller and with more than 14 days of battery life. I just ran the London Marathon and WHOOP was huge for helping me balance my daily strain while staying on top of my recovery.
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You can't get faster without proper rest and WHOOP's insights helped me dial in both sides of the equation. Now, WHOOP includes HeartScreener with on-demand ECG readings so you can check in on your heart anytime and share results with your healthcare provider.
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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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
It really is like marathon training. Maybe now the training I put in today can help me in the future.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Okay, how am I losing to an ETF right now?
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
So yes, it's a joke, but I do think comedy is a two-way street in this regard.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
Then who is Mark Carney, the banker turned prime minister of Canada? It's Tuesday, March 11th. Let's ride.
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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Tech Rout Wipes Away $1.1T & Another ‘DeepSeek’ Moment?
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Neil, the performance termination, as Meta calls them, are upon us.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
Then bust out the cardboard boxes in Menlo Park. Meta's layoffs have begun. It's Tuesday, February 11th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
One, we're actually trying to bolster U.S. domestic manufacturing.
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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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Meta Trims its Workforce for AI? & Trump Stamps 25% Tariffs on Steel
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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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the ad companies behind Got Milk and Think Different are combining to upend the marketing industry. Is it because they're worth it?
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
The global wellness industry was worth, what, over $6 trillion last year. This is part of that industry of people really caring about the way they feel in their bodies. So I am bullish on backscratching.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
In his manifesto, he railed against health insurance companies and corporate America, saying they were seeking profits over putting customers. And Americans are So still a long way to go to understand what what really motivated him. But quite a digital footprint that left a lot of people, you know, amateur sleuths researching what this guy was all about.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
And it feels like the only big overhead cost here is making sure your nails are good because this, some of these people have three inch nails that they have to keep perfect, you know, to be for, for optimal scratching. So that is just one of the considerations. If you have good nails, maybe grow them out to three, three inches, uh, keep them filed and then open up an ASMR spine.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
You could be raking in $160 for 50 minutes, which is one of the, which is what one of these people are charging. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines from the news. Mondelez International is hot for more chocolate.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
The maker of Oreos is reportedly thinking about buying Hershey in a mega deal that would create the world's largest confectionery company with sales of nearly $50 billion. Hershey owns more than 90 brands, including Reese's and Kit Kat, but it's had a rough year due to skyrocketing cocoa prices and consumers pulling back on their buying, so shares have fallen 14% in the last three months.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
That means Mondelez, which owns Chips Ahoy, Ritz Crackers, and Sour Patch Kids, thinks it could snag Hershey at a bargain while boosting its chocolate portfolio. Toby, would this deal spark Almond Joy?
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I'm just excited to see what could happen to Hershey Park. A little Sour Patch Kids ride there. We get some of Mondelez's portfolio. But besides that, it does seem like chocolate companies are being hurt a lot. Cocoa prices have more than doubled from the start of the year. And so these chocolate companies are maybe looking for a way out.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
But this is not the first time Mondelez has tried to buy Hershey's. Tried to do it for $23 billion in 2016. Hershey said no. Now we are, what, eight years later. It's going to be a much higher price. So we'll see if the Hershey Trust is going to accept the deal this time.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Yeah. And they're taking a lot of safety precautions with this release because this is the first time where they're releasing it to the wild. And being able to create videos from AI just by typing in a sentence and create a video certainly has raised a lot of concerns. All of these videos will have visible watermarks and metadata that show that it was created by AI.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
He's now being held without bail in Pennsylvania and at some point will be extradited to New York.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
They're not allowing users to create any videos with people now, so it's likely to just be animals and scenes. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with Sora. In the meantime, since it was first introduced and now it's released, A bunch of competitors have stepped in. There's Google, there's Runway, there's a company called Minimax. There's ones from China.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
So there's been a, you know, everyone was blown away by Sorba. Now it's certainly not the only player in this field anymore. The stimmies could be coming back, at least for New Yorkers. Governor Kathy Hochul said yesterday that the state brought in more money than expected from sales taxes and plans to send that money back to New York residents in the form of direct payments.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Hochul is calling the checks an inflation refund, and her stated goal is to top off the finances of New Yorkers struggling from price hikes over the past few years. If passed by the state legislature in the fall of 2025, New York could send $500 checks to families making up to $300,000 and $300 to individuals earning $150,000 or less. In total, $3 billion could be sent to 8.6 million New Yorkers.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Toby, New York isn't the only state that's sent or plans to send surplus money back to residents. Is this endorsed by economists?
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I mean, I wouldn't turn it down. This is a playbook used by other states as well. California did the same thing in the name of inflation in 2022. And Alaska, right, has this fund that since the 70s has sent checks to residents. from surplus oil revenues. They produce a lot of oil. They put it all into a fund. And then every year, they send it back to residents.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
So this is a playbook that's been done before. Some people pointed out that if you're trying to combat inflation, sending more money into the economy for people to spend is not exactly the best way to do that. So we'll see. The state legislature still has to approve it. And if it does, then those checks could be coming in the fall.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
She's hilarious, but I love the Golden Globe nomination list primarily because it gives incredible recommendations on what to watch. I thought I had watched a lot of movie this year, but apparently I had not because the top film nominees, five of them, I've just never seen. Emilia Perez, The Brutalist, Conclave, Onora, which people say is incredible, and The Substance. I haven't seen any of those.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I guess I've just been on the wicked challenger's train. Those did get some nominations. Dune Part 2 only got two.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Tuesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if this podcast scratches your back in all the right places, share it with someone else who's itching for a fun way to get news.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I think Toby has a great recommendation for you today.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and Makeup went down a quantum computing rabbit hole, and we haven't heard from them since. Devin Emery is our chief content officer, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
And these are the movers and shakers at their companies too. Top CFOs saying overwhelmingly that they are using the power of AI and automation to transform their roles.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
We'll be right back. The tie-up is legacy marketing's response to AI and big tech firms like Facebook and Google revolutionizing the way advertising works at their expense. You may not have heard of Omnicom and Interpublic Group before, but their vast network of agencies are behind many of the TV commercials you mute and the online ads you scroll quickly past.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Their client rosters include AT&T, Amazon, Pepsi, Unilever, and Geico, while they're responsible for some of the most iconic ad campaigns in history, such as Apple's Think Different, L'Oreal's Because I'm Worth It, and Got Milk. Together, the combined company will be worth more than $30 billion.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
We're going to find out. I mean, these companies are trying to refashion themselves more as digital technology companies than classic media agencies. They've been on a buying spree, acquiring smaller companies over the past decade that you would think has nothing to do with classic advertising. digital brokers. These are influencer marketing platforms.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
These are e-commerce companies that help you sell on Amazon. The entire industry has shifted under their feet and they think they need to build scale now to compete against AI, which lowers costs and renders a lot of their services obsolete. You know, say I want to, I would typically go to an agency to whip up some ad creative for me.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Now I can just use maybe an AI generator that Adobe makes and create something on my own for a fraction of the cost. Maybe I would go to an ad agency to help me plan my media buying. Where should I buy ads? Should I buy this billboard? Should I buy a TV commercial? Now I can just go to Facebook or Google and they'll all do it for me and have all these personalized services where I can target
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
people in a way that I never could before. So this is a rapidly changing industry and there's big four companies are buying all of these other smaller companies to keep up.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
And scale could be a problem. As I mentioned, these are the third and fourth largest advertising companies in the world. And combining, they would be the number one eclipsing company Publicist Group and WPP, which are the are one and two right now that could raise antitrust concerns. Yes, we are moving away from the Biden administration's very harsh antitrust stance.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
But the incoming Trump administration, Trump nominated Gail Slater, who's a pretty tough and competition enforcer to run the DOJ's antitrust division. So this combined company could get a look from regulators. She is known. Slater is known for going after big tech companies pretty hard. But we'll see. This is you know, these companies want to fashion themselves as as tech companies now.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
So we'll see what happens in the in the antitrust realm.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
No, no, this is a big deal. I mean, the temperature in the trade war between the U.S. and China is absolutely heated up just in the last two weeks. And China is not revealing what NVIDIA may have violated over this agreement that they made a few years ago.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
But this is absolutely sending a message to the United States that China will respond and will flex its government powers to put American companies, NVIDIA being perhaps the most prominent and the most important of any company in the world under the Microsoft. So we're seeing a rapid increase in rapid escalation in in the supply chain warfare between the US and China.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
And right now, both countries are just laying their chips on the table, perhaps to pursue a grand bargain, a big deal coming up in the next few months. But this is a this is a big deal.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
And Nvidia is being squeezed on both sides, not just in China, but in the United States. The United States has barred Nvidia from selling its most advanced AI chips to China, which are probably the most expensive. And then at the same time, the U.S. is also investigating Nvidia for antitrust concerns because no one makes... the chips that it does as well as it does.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
So it has a 90% market share of this AI, advanced AI chip market. So it is being investigated for whether it did so. It acquired this dominance illegally. So NVIDIA is becoming one of the biggest political footballs in this trade war between the United States and China.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Well, we know quite a bit. He had a very extensive digital footprint that people were combing yesterday. He did come from a prominent and influential real estate family in Baltimore, went to a prestigious prep school there named Gilman, then went to UPenn for engineering, got a bachelor's and a master's there. It seemed like he was very interested in technology. computer gaming.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Google just unveiled a revolutionary new quantum computer, and let's just say you won't have any buffering issues watching Netflix on it. This quantum computer took just five minutes to solve a problem that take the best supercomputers around 10 septillion years, 10 with 30 zeros.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
In a blog post, Google wrote, this mind-boggling number exceeds known timescales in physics and vastly exceeds the age of the universe. It lends credence to the notion that quantum computing... occurs in many parallel universes in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse. Okay.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
This breakthrough is made possible by a new chip Google calls Willow, which has cracked a three decade old problem keeping quantum computers from making it to the big time. Experts compared Google's technological milestone to the first man-made nuclear chain reaction in 1942. It's that huge. You're probably rolling your eyes and thinking, come on, Neil, I've heard this before.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
Quantum computing seems like they've been trying this forever and nothing really has come of it. And you know what? You are right. The concept of quantum computing dates back to the 1980s and despite billions and billions poured into the field by companies and governments, these insanely powerful computers have yet to offer any useful applications.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
To get something done practically, you're better off with a TI-89. But that could change thanks to Google's achievement. Toby, what was the key breakthrough here?
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I would very much appreciate that.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
That was pretty impressive, Toby. Nice job. Yeah, that concept of something existing in two states of matter at once is called superposition. Definitely look up Schrodinger's cat, which kind of is the most famous example of something existing in two states at once. So say we figure this out. Google said that it reduced the amount of errors that quantum computing is able to, you know,
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
do these computations without many mistakes. What are some potential use cases for this down the line? Because companies have poured in billions of dollars, Intel, IBM, Google, they're betting on quantum computing to actually be able to be commercially viable. one day.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
He even built a mobile app before college. And from his goods reads, it seems like he was very interested and is from his Twitter profile, very interested in things like self-improvement, healthy eating, also veered into criticism of capitalism. And then it feels like a few months ago, he kind of went off the map after back surgery.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
So one big use case that experts think could be used by quantum computing is drug discovery and drug design could crack encryption, speed up decision making in financial transactions, improve machine learning, even address climate change through forecasting and weather modeling. So there are do seem to be some ultimate some ultimate applications. But I
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I think even with Google's breakthrough, they're saying, like, don't expect anything soon. We're not about to open up our MacBook, and it's going to be a quantum computer anytime soon.
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$13B Mega-Deal Creates Advertising Giant & Google’s Staggering Quantum Computer
I'll scratch yours. I have never gotten a massage from a professional masseuse, but I would consider getting a back scratch because that sounds absolutely delightful. It's part of this growing ASMR economy. You have these ASMR people spas opening up in Los Angeles and New York. There's one right down the road from us in Williamsburg that we'll definitely have to check out.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Step up your wardrobe with Motion Wool. Head to theory.com slash morningbrew to get started. That's theory.com slash morningbrew. What if I told you that the hottest new fashion trend wasn't wide-legged jeans or biker shorts, but something much more attached to you, something you probably dealt with in middle school, something on your teeth?
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Yep, brace yourself for another Toby's Trends, because today we're talking about braces making a comeback. Suddenly, jaw hardware is the hottest new status symbol amongst the youths and adults alike. Orthodontists have reported a rise in interest in the once uncool OG metal braces as wearers are embracing their imperfections and flashing metallic smiles with pride.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Part of it is tied to popular culture, old and new. There was Marsha Brady in the Brady Bunch, and of course, America Ferreira in Ugly Betty. But contemporary stars like rapper Lil Uzi Vert are also proudly flaunting their orthodontic infrastructure, leading to an uptick of young people wanting to do the same. Part of the appeal, though, is undeniably tied to price tag. Braces can range from
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
$3,000 to 10 grand and are often not covered by insurance. So rocking 10 racks on your face is just the latest way to flex. Plus, accessories like colorful rubber bands and jewels turn braces into tooth bling and offer wearers another outlet to express their individuality. Neil, as a former brace face myself, I'm happy to see this narrative shifting, but it is a bit baffling at the same time.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Braces are cool, but you are right that part of it is that Invisalign is not only boring, but people don't like having to remember to wear their trays, and you have to wear them for 22 hours a day. You have to take them out when you eat. So part of it is just the logistics of it all. They'd rather just have these braces.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
But part of it is that a lot of people are just saying that they're embracing this – they are literally working on self-improvement. So like, why would I hide this thing? Like I'm trying to invest in my appearance here. So now you're seeing kids who used to, you know, beg to take them off, begging to leave them on because it's become a part of their personality and something like that.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
If you run a small business and you're doing it in your own taxes right now, stop.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And these orthodontists are posting in Facebook groups, national Facebook groups and going, Is anyone else seeing this? And they're all like, yes, for some reason, these kids do not want to take them off. So I think it's a good thing overall, though, because braces were traumatic for a lot of kids. Like you didn't want to even smile. It made us all do those smizes where you don't open your teeth.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
But now if people are embracing them, I think that's overall probably a good thing. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Shopify has drawn a line in the sand when it comes to AI usage at the company, stating that not only is it encouraged, but AI use is now a fundamental expectation for all employees.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Shopify CEO Toby Lutke emphasized the critical role AI will play in a memo he posted on X yesterday. He told staff to treat AI as a tool for innovation and efficiency, and pushed to integrate it into tasks like product development, performance reviews, and even hiring decisions.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Lutke highlighted that teams must demonstrate why AI cannot fulfill the needs before requesting additional resources or headcount. He also warned against stagnation, arguing that embracing AI is and will be essential for staying competitive as a business. Outside of Klarna's AI-obsessed CEO, this might be the most explicit endorsement of AI we've seen from a major company.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Let them be the heroes here. You've got a business to run. You don't need to spend three hours Googling whether that client dinner counts as a deduction.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
I am impressed, mainly because these direwolves are going to be really big, bigger than normal gray wolves when they're fully grown, 140 pounds. But also, these animals were bred by studying DNA from original direwolves, which date back to a 13,000-year-old tooth, a 72,000 year old skull. So they had to pick and choose these genes and insert them into genes from a gray wolf.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And yeah, their next stop is de-extinction. But I'm also impressed with this other announcement that was kind of overshadowed by bringing direwolves back. And that was that they had cloned four red wolves, which are currently a critically endangered species.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Population in the US and the aim is to bring more genetic diversity to the population of captive red wolves So they're trying to breed and help save this species.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
So even amongst these buzzy, you know bring back Game of Thrones extinct era wolves They also are working towards, you know, supporting and trying to save species that are currently alive today So that's kind of the colossal playbook that we've been seeing make headlines with this big announcement but also work to save current species on earth today and
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Plus, you can bundle your business and individual taxes to save a little time and money and get live help when you need it so you don't feel like it's you against the entire IRS.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Well, I mean, are they real still? Because technically these are crossbred with gray wolves, but that is a fair admission. I probably was on the same page, but I would never admit it live on this podcast. Alright, let's move on. Some people will do anything for clicks, even if it means risking death or potentially causing a micro-apocalypse.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
In March, a YouTuber who goes by the name of NeoOrientalist illegally visited North Sentinel Island in the Indian Ocean, home to the ultra-isolated Sentinelese tribe, leaving behind a coconut, a can of cola, and a whole lot of risk. The Sentinelese have violently resisted all contact for decades to protect themselves from outsiders and, more importantly, their diseases.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Even the simple flu could be catastrophic to this community because they have no immunity. Neo-Orientalist has since been arrested by Indian authorities and may face jail time, which is still a better outcome than a previous visitor to the island. In 2018, a missionary from the U.S. illegally visited and was ultimately killed by the tribe after making contact.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
So yesterday wasn't the Black Monday 2.0 many predicted it to be with all three major U.S. indexes finishing the day right around even. But how we got to that relatively benign closing figure was an absolute roller coaster. As expected, the market opened deep in the red as Trump showed no signs of backing down from his tariff plans. But then things went haywire right around 10 a.m.,
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Suddenly, the S&P 500 switched from red to green, soaring over 7% in a matter of minutes. The culprit? A rumor started on X that there would be a 90-day pause on all tariffs except for China. The tweet in question came from an anonymous account that goes by Walter Bloomberg, no relation to the actual Bloomberg.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
who wrote that the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, said Trump was considering a respite. That rumor spread like wildfire. It was eventually picked up by CNBC, leading to the massive stock run-up. Then came the reality check. People started to realize that the rumor was exactly that, a rumor.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And an hour later, the White House issued a statement outright denying the report, and the market quickly made a U-turn. Just to put the volatility into perspective, the entire stock market gained, then lost more money in a matter of minutes based on a single unverified tweet than it was worth 40 years ago. Two and a half trillion dollars of movement, one tweet.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Finally, just to throw one more variable into the cauldron of volatility, Trump went on to threaten an extra 50% tariff on China. if they didn't rescind their 34% tariff on U.S. goods. It all combined to add up to a whole lot of nothing. The S&P 500 closed down just 0.2%, while the Nasdaq eked out a 0.1% gain.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Neil, there were dumps, then pumps, then dumps again, enough to give your portfolio whiplash.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
The Wall Street Journal kind of tracked down this tweet origins to an account named Hammer Capital on X. It is an anonymous account that with 692 followers and a bio that reads memes and vibes, that was the first time this rumor started. And then it got picked up by this much larger Walter Bloomberg account. And then just absolute chaos broke out. And I think a lot of people...
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
The takeaway from this story is just how fast information moves in today's trading environment because it really just underscores how, one, many investors are just feverish for any information that might calm this market, but then also, how quickly Wall Street's high-frequency trading algorithms react to news like that, which is why we saw this just incredible run-up.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
It's one of the biggest intraday moves ever in the stock market. You have to go back to March of 2020 to find a move of similar magnitude, and it all comes from these... really these algorithms reacting to this one little shred of information.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
So I think it just shows the current trading environment we live in has the ability to make these massive moves based on just how quickly you can react to new information.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Then how a single tweet added, then erased, trillions of dollars from the U.S. stock markets. It's Tuesday, April 8th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
It absolutely has. And it's not just Wall Street specific billionaires as well. Elon Musk has also been sounding off against this tariff situation. He's kind of publicly sniped at the key tariff architect you mentioned, Peter Navarro, saying that his PhD from Harvard is a bad thing and not a good thing. And then Navarro kind of struck back and said, he's just protecting his own interests.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
He's a businessman. Of course, he doesn't like this. So you are seeing some of these cracks form in kind of this coalition around Trump with Elon Musk, with Bill Ackman, sending a lot of tweets about how he wants a little 90-day timeout on this tariff situation. So you are seeing the who's who of Wall Street, basically influencers. I know that's a ridiculous thing to call
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Jamie Dimon, but that's what they are, kind of sounding off and letting their feelings be known about these tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And then even on Washington as well, Ted Cruz has raised fears about the next election cycle. And then some Republicans have started pushing towards signing legislation that would allow Congress to remove tariffs with a majority vote. So you are seeing some pushback. on the hill as well.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
And then finally, we are going to hear from Wall Street once more again this week because JP Morgan, BlackRock, and Wells Fargo are all due to announce earnings on Friday.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Yeah, let's look at the backward-looking one first. It offers a remedy for college athletes who played before 2021, which is when the NCAA allowed players to cash in on their name, image, and likeness. And so there's about a $3 billion, $2.75 billion pot that is set to be distributed to those players. And that is really based on which sports you played in at which schools.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
The majority of that money is going to go towards sports. the Power Five conferences, and money-making sports like football and basketball. So if you are a swimmer or maybe if you are a soccer player, you're not going to get a large sum, but you will have a little bit of money waiting there for you.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
But it really is the future where the big transformation is kind of aligned here because going forward, allowing schools to share revenue with student-athletes is just a complete – and a complete upending of the old amateurism laws that governed NCAA sports. So this is definitely one of those things that completely rewrites the rulebook around how college sports are going to be approached.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Well, if you thought that was a crazy bit of Nintendo naming lore, try this one on for size. There was this civil rights attorney, John Joseph Kirby, who famously defended Nintendo in a major IP case that allowed Nintendo to keep using the name Donkey Kong.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
One knock-on effect of this, too, is that it's a totally new way of running an athletics program, and it's a lot more pro-based. And so what you will be seeing is more of these GM figures come in to say, hey, how do we manage a roster? How much is a player worth? What salary should we devote towards them? So you're going to see colleges and universities hiring sometimes former athletes.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
Like Steph has been named the GM of Davidson's basketball program. you are going to see people coming in to run these like professional sports franchises because that's basically what they are. And then finally, one thing that we have to mention is that with these new roster sizes incoming, a lot of players who maybe were under scholarship will now no longer be
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
receiving the aid that they thought they would. So that's been a big pushback from a lot of current and former athletes is saying, hey, you are upending these kids' lives here. They're probably going to have to transfer, but transferring is a very traumatic situation. You don't bring your friends with you, even though you might play a sport there.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
So you are seeing some pushback specifically around this roster limitation from athletes, which is maybe one of the big sticking points that will hang this settlement up. Up next, let's talk about Toby's Trends. Have you heard what's happening in Ohio lately? The list is long, folks.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
The economic development corporation Jobs Ohio is making it insanely easy and appealing for businesses to lay down roots in the Buckeye State.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
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.
Morning Brew Daily
CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
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. 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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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
That win helped solidify the company's rise and also earned them the honor of being the namesake for their little pink character, also named Kirby. And get this, I'm named Toby because my mom stubbed her toe on a bee and Neil is named Neil because, okay. I'll stop. Let's get to the ad. A word from our sponsor, TaxAct.
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CEOs Sound Off Against Tariffs & The NCAA Case Upending NIL
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
I mean, that was a five-hour podcast. He only releases about two episodes a year, but he has this extremely fanatical audience. And I do think what you're seeing, too, is that the population is aging right now. We've talked a lot about how birth rates are kind of falling and just as a whole, people are getting older.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Same. The only thing more impressive than running a marathon every single day could be recording a business news podcast every morning. I think they're on similar levels. Also, it was a leap year last year, so she actually ran 366 marathons. Pretty crazy. How about this, though, too? She was working part-time. She also has four children and a husband, so it wasn't just running 24-7.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
And when you start to realize that once you have more history in your life, you probably are more interested in it. There is like the joke that every dad eventually becomes interested in World War II because you just become more interested in history as you grow up. And then also looking back through history, any period of profound technological or social change has been accompanied by
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
kind of this mania for looking backwards into the past. When the Victorians were kind of entering the Industrial Revolution, they all became obsessed with dinosaurs, ancient Egypt, and classical civilization. And then in the period after World War II, look at what the biggest movies in Hollywood were.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
They were War and Peace, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, Cleopatra, all these backwards-facing movies. historical kind of blockbusters. So I do think now as we're in the age of AI, you are seeing just this renewed interest in history because as things change, the more you want things to stay the same and the more you look back into the past.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
That was English. I mean, it is just emblematic of our current streaming landscape right now. It's like FUBU, TEEHEE, BUBU, that's what it sounds like, but they are, you are seeing this era of rebundling happen right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
It's definitely a little awkward right now because this deal is closing over the next two years, but you'll still have to access Hulu plus live TV from the Hulu app and then FUBO through the FUBU TV app. So it's, It's not ideal. These are two separate apps still. So even though they're a combined entity, you still will have to, you know, access them via separate platforms.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
So one person who is extremely happy, though, are Fubo stockholders. Fubo's stock more than tripled on the announcement. So clearly this bundling that we're seeing in the cable industry is going to lead to some, you know, winners here. One of them being Fubo as they try to take on the big behemoth, which is YouTube TV with 8 million subscribers.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Mark Zuckerberg has long been a fan of combat sports, and now he's mixing business with pleasure. Zuck appointed Dana White, the CEO of the UFC, to Meta's board yesterday, praising his entrepreneurial skills to go alongside new additions John Elkin and Charlie Songhurst.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
White is also very good friends with Donald Trump, whose inauguration is just two weeks away, so it looks like this move is also part of Meta's strategy to to strengthen ties with the incoming administration. You know, Meta certainly has one of the more physically imposing boards now when it comes to big.
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Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
She also lived life in between.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Finally, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang donned his leather jacket and kicked off the biggest tech conference in the world, CES, yesterday with a keynote outlining Nvidia's ambitions over the coming years. Part of that vision is Project Digit, a personal AI supercomputer powered by one of its next-gen Blackwell chips. that can sit on your desk.
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Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Huang also introduced a platform called Cosmos that creates photorealistic videos that can then be used to train physical AI systems like robots or autonomous vehicles at a fraction of the cost of gathering conventional real-world data. Neil, this was a buzzy keynote to say the least.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Yeah, I think the big unlock here is that usually to train robots or autonomous vehicles, you have to literally drive them in the world or pilot them around the real world. But if you can mimic the real world with these very realistic simulations, essentially, it drastically reduces the training costs.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
and the training time because now you can drive it through a virtual world instead of the real world. So I think Cosmos is the big unlock when it comes to robotics.
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Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
I want you to share the podcast with someone who might be a little under the weather right now.
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Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
of Morning Brew great show Danielle let's run it back tomorrow
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Trudeau is kind of emblematic of a lot of the things that progressive politics around the world are suffering right now. They're suffering a lot of voter backlash. You look at the economic stagnation coming out of Europe. It does mirror what's happening in Canada as well. Canada's economy got really wonky. Inflation peaked at 8% back in 2022. It hasn't dipped below that 2% until last summer.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Then Trudeau tried to jumpstart the economy by increasing immigration, which likely led to these rising housing costs, like you mentioned, also spurred a lot of voter backlash as well. Unemployment is still At a near record high at 7% in November. Also, the number of Canadians visiting food banks, that hit a record last spring.
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Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
So everywhere you look, there's a lot of disconnect in this voter body. So there was, the writing was on the wall, and the last thing on the coffin was his own, you know, economic minister turning against him.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
And then what is Trudeau's loss and the Liberal Party's loss is the Conservative Party's gains. If an election were to be held right now, right now the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Polivere, is up in the polls by double digits right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
So it does look like the tides are changing in Canada, just like they are, just like populist right-wing parties have made strides across the European Union and really all across the world. So it does look like there will be a change in the rule of Canada going forward.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Yeah, these legal actions are definitely a long shot. I mean, you called it a Hail Mary here because they are saying that this deal was heavily influenced by election year politics.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Still, we're calling this a Hail Mary because presidents do have the authority to determine what constitutes a national security threat and no transaction that has been blocked by a president citing national security concerns have been overturned by the court. So we are stepping into unprecedented territory.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
One thing going in Nippon's favor, though, is that usually for the vast majority of these rulings, it involved China, an adversary of the U.S. or a friendless area of the U.S. They usually involve companies tied to China. This one is different. tied to a U.S. ally in Japan.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
So potentially there is something, some wiggle room here, especially as you kind of exit out of this election year political cycle and can look at it with a more fresh and clearer look, not tainted by trying to win an election.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Then a new high-tech Tiger Woods-backed golf league kicks off its inaugural season tonight. It's Tuesday, January 7th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
And then one thing, too, is that it's not just Biden who's opposing this deal. It's also President-elect Donald Trump. He opposed it last year in the election cycle, but he also has pledged to impose those hefty tariffs on imported goods. So yesterday he posted on True Social, why would they, meaning U.S. Steel, want to sell U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Steel now in tariffs will make it a much more profitable and viable company, with the idea being that if you impose these tariffs, it will make U.S. Steel more competitive on the global market. So it looks like the deal isn't going to be revived anytime soon, despite this last-minute legal action.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
As cold winter air descends upon much of America, golfers everywhere are heading indoors to get their swings in on golf simulators. Some of the best players in the world are doing the same. Players like Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods will be teeing it up tonight for the first match of the TGL, a new simulator golf league looking to reimagine golf as we know it.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Gone are wide fairways and a cool breeze on your face. In their place is a 250,000-square-foot indoor venue, an IMAX-sized screen 24 times larger than your typical golf simulator, and real grass and rough to hit off of.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
An all-star roster of investors, including Derek Jeter, Jimmy Fallon, the Williams sisters, and Tiger Woods, are betting that packaging golf in a different format, with an emphasis on hot mics, a fast-moving team format, and some eye-popping tech will draw new viewers to the sport. Neil, I see the vision.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Simulator Golf is becoming a more popular entry point into the game for a lot of non-golfers because it's less intimidating and more accessible, but can this beefed-up version capture an audience once the novelty wears off?
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Yeah. I mean, we're definitely going to be more bullish than the average person I would say, but These matches are trying to be more of a party environment. They're going to have an emcee. There's going to be a DJ there. They're trying to create that party atmosphere that you've seen at some of these golf tournaments like the Waste Management in Phoenix, Arizona.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Players will emerge from the tunnel like wrestlers. Part of the design was inspired by WWE, but I also think that the tech is playing a big part in drawing viewers into this. I mean, these, the green itself is this big 41 yard wide turntable with 567 hydraulic actuators underneath that can change the brakes, change the contours of the green.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
So when you hit a ball onto the green on the simulator, you can then walk over to the green and putt based off of what the, you know, brakes are on that green. So a lot of very cool, you can call them gimmicks if you want, but I think the tech will hopefully draw people in, but then maybe the product will keep people tuning in every week.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
I mean, it airs at 9 p.m. on Tuesday. So for us, maybe our bedtime is, you know, holding that against us. But yes. Do you think people will be watching? Hopefully, yes. Up next, it's Toby's Trends time.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
If you nodded off during history class in high school, not only did you miss out on learning how the Mesopotamians were the first civilization to develop the concept of zero, but you also might have missed out on a lucrative career. The history business is booming, and I want to talk about it on today's edition of Toby's Trends. Leading the charge are podcasts.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
The Rest is History snags 12.5 million downloads monthly, outperforming This American Life by over a million downloads a week, as millions tune in to hear two middle-aged British historians talk about the Visigoths, among other things. History book sales in the UK and Ireland also hit record highs in 2023, with sales of ancient history books in particular rising 67% in the last decade.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
In the U.S., the overall book market has been pretty much flat, but the history category has bucked that trend, growing 6% in the past year alone, according to Circana. Toss in a TikTok trend from last year about how much we're all thinking about the Roman Empire, and everywhere you look, people are looking backwards. A few things could be contributing to the resurgence in historical interests.
Morning Brew Daily
Biden-Blocked $15B Steel Merger Gets Messy & Indoor Golf Ready for Prime Time?
Our current era of rapid technological change could cause people to look backwards more fondly. Plus, declining enrollment in academic history could be pushing people towards more accessible mediums like podcasts and YouTube. Which begs the question, Neil, should we ride this wave and start a history podcast?
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Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
All Mint Mobile plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. Use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts.
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Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
If you're driving on the stretch of road between Dallas and Houston and come across a semi truck, don't do the pull the horn signal because chances are no one will be there to see it. Why might not there be anyone in the driver's seat? I'm going to tell you on this edition of Toby's Trends.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
Neil, one of these days our ships will come in, Toby's Trends will be honored for national reporting, or Neil's numbers will snag that public service award. We will get there. But seriously, a lot of the research that goes into producing our show, Morning Brew Daily, comes from the on-the-ground reporting that these reporters are doing.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
Aurora Innovation is an autonomous trucking company that plans to start testing out totally driverless rides in the next few days. The test drives are part of the company's goal to remake a trucking industry in the U.S. that is plagued by high driver turnover rates and rising costs.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
Jeff Farah, the CEO of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, told Axios, The federal government is saying we have to move 50% more freight by 2050, but there's a shortage of drivers. How do I solve this puzzle with more freight to move and less drivers to do it? Enter Aurora and at least 10 other companies that are working on developing driverless semi-trucking tech.
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Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
Most companies are planning to head to the Lone Star State to test their metal due to its good weather, popular freight routes, and favorable regulatory policies. So seriously, keep your eyes peeled if you frequent I-45. The end goal of driverless trucks is to save some money and offset driver shortages.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
A McKinsey analysis showed that if you cut out driver salaries, fleet operators could slash operating costs per mile by as much as 42%. Savings like those have drawn the interest of companies like Uber Freight, who recently conducted a test run with Aurora, albeit with safety drivers present. But now Aurora is going totally solo dolo, representing a big leap forward for the budding industry.
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Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
Neil, if any industry stands to benefit from the push for autonomous driving, it is long-haul trucking.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
And this is closer than we think because Aurora said that the self-driving tech has completed over 1,200 miles, albeit with a human controller sitting in the passenger seat. And the technology on these is a little bit different than self-driving vehicles, mainly because it can see just so much further ahead down the road.
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Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
So if you've ever learned something new or felt just a little bit smarter after a morning listen, you've got them to thank as well. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, everyone's talking about how this is the age of AI. Smart fridges, smart vacuums, smart-aleck kids who think ChachiBT know the answers to everything.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
These trucks are equipped with sensors that can see the length of over four miles. football field. So that is a big reason why they're trying to test it on these kind of long, straight roads that you associate with long haul destruction, because you can see way out into the distance.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
But yeah, some of the issues that they've run into with unions is even just like safety things where normally when a truck breaks down, a human has to get out and put down these little barriers that show you that, hey, there is a broken down truck here. Aurora was trying to push and other driverless tech companies were trying to push for
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
having those lights be on the actual cab itself, because obviously if there's no driver, then how could you put out that safety equipment? So that's just a microcosm of some of the regulatory battles that they are fighting and that are getting pushed back against the transport. The Transport Workers Union is pushing back against it because they say, obviously, they want to advocate for drivers.
Morning Brew Daily
Tariffs Hitting Hollywood? & Air Traffic Control Shortage Delays Newark
So some regulatory issues to still get over the hurdle, but clearly it looks like there's some good momentum on the autonomous driving trucking front. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Skechers, the shoe company popular with nurses, pickleball players, and middle schoolers, is getting acquired for nearly $10 billion.
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In a surprise move, the global investment firm 3G Capital swooped in to take the shoe company, which reported over $2.5 billion in sales in the first quarter of the year, private. Despite notching 7% sales growth, Skechers and the footwear industry as a whole are has gotten flat-tired by tariffs affecting imports from China and Vietnam, where Skechers manufactures most of its products.
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As such, the company recently withdrew its full-year guidance. But 3G is betting that the sales momentum Skechers is showing is something that can hold up to macroeconomic pressure, while shareholders are thrilled that someone is buying the company for a nearly 30% premium, setting the stock soaring 25% yesterday. Looks like a win-win here, Neil."
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And there's billions of dollars on the line here, obviously, because a lot of the funding that OpenAI has received from investors like SoftRank were contingent upon it ditching its nonprofit structure and going into a for-profit entity. This isn't exactly that, but apparently it crosses the T's and dots the I's.
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It still has to be approved by a variety of different state kind of attorneys generals between Delaware and California. But it does look like the big red arrow or red X that could have happened if they didn't change their corporate structure has been averted.
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So they're breathing a sigh of relief here, even if it's not exactly what you would expect from a corporate kind of rejiggering perspective here. Up next, President Trump posted on Sunday that he is directing multiple federal agencies to work together to rebuild and reopen the iconic and infamous Alcatraz prison in order to, quote, house America's most ruthless and violent offenders.
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Alcatraz hasn't been open for 60 years now after shuttering due to high maintenance costs. The island fortress was about three times more expensive to operate. than any other federal prison, according to its website. And in the years since, it has welcomed a lot more tourists than criminals, with approximately 1.2 million visitors stopping by every year to see the National Historic Landmark.
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So the president's plan to reopen the complex might be as hard to pull off as an escape from Alcatraz.
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Well, my idea for Alcatraz is the triathlon because leave it to endurance athletes to say, oh, super mass prison. Let's start a swimming event from there, which does happen to 2000 people a year, you know, drive a ferry off. They dive in near Alcatraz, escape via swim and then do the bike and run afterwards. So it's coming up May 31st on the calendar.
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It's rich, creamy, and blends like dairy, but without the dairy or the soy or the gluten.
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It just missed its moment. During the 2020 pandemic, Zoom usage exploded 30x over its 30 times, but Skype didn't see any spike. And actually, the app went from 40 million users in 2020 to 36 million in 2023. It was, you know, that eponym before Zoom was even a thing. You used to say, I Skype people. Now you say, I Zoom people. So we've already kind of given its laurels before on the show.
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But, you know, yesterday being its last day was a sad day, especially because we're never going to hear that. Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop.
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Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more.
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First, let's dive into all the questions around this proclamation. Would it apply to American productions that are mostly filmed in the U.S., but have some scenes shot over in other countries? Or would it apply to movies where post-production work, like editing and that visual effects? If those are handled outside the U.S., does that count as well?
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And then also, does it apply to just American-owned movies or does it apply to all movies across the world? So a lot of people kind of went down some of these rabbit holes and found nothing at the end of them, which is why maybe we saw a little bit of the walking back. So probably the broader conversation to have here is just the flight forward. from the U.S.
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to other countries when it comes to making movies. We were listening to a podcast between Rob Lowe and Adam Scott from Parks and Rec the other day, and they were basically saying how it would have been if they were filming Parks and Rec now versus 10 years ago. They probably would be doing it in Budapest because of how many tax incentives and how much more expensive it is to do inside the U.S.
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versus abroad. So that is a conversation that Trump is dead on, that the movie industry has been fleeing America, specifically California, for far-flung places.
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And we did see some movie-related stocks fall yesterday after the news. I mean, Netflix was down as much as 4% at one point. Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount were all in that 3% to 5% range. So it wasn't a huge move, but it was definitely some sort of reaction. And a lot of it is because if you just look at Netflix, a lot of their content is produced internationally.
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75% of Netflix's entire content slate is internationally. Some of those are literally international films because they have a very widespread audience. But A significant part of its domestic production stuff that you think was made in America was actually made in places like Canada or the United Kingdom.
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So Netflix is very exposed should this, you know, undefined tariff kind of apply to entertainment filmed outside of the U.S. So that is why potentially they are a little bit nervous and we're kind of coalescing and saying, what do we do about this thing? Even though maybe nothing is going to come of it.
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Ben, a Newark airport has been plunged into chaos after a multi-day meltdown of its air traffic control systems. It's Tuesday, May 6th. Let's ride.
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Yeah. CNN got the transcripts from some of these air traffic controllers trying to talk to planes, these air traffic controllers based out of Newark. Philadelphia's Terminal Radar Approach Control Center. And some of them are pretty jarring to hear. One is a pilot asking approach, are you there?
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He tried to contract the controller five times and got dead radio silence, which is very scary if you're a pilot because you don't know where you are, where other planes are in relation to you. And so as those 30 seconds of silent emerged, it cascaded into this entire sort of emergency situation here on Newark, which resulted in those thousands of delays, hundreds of cancellations.
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And it really did leave an impact on the flight controllers as well. At least five FAA employees after that day took 45 days of trauma leave afterward because they were just so stressed out, so high strung that their eyes and ears were basically lost for 30 seconds. And planes started popping up in places that they didn't expect, which is just a very scary thing. So, yes, it is.
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a situation that is affecting Newark, but also the broader conversation here is just the chronic staffing delays, the technology, the outdated technology that the FAA is still relying on.
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Unfortunately, I have some bad news for about one in five of you listening who have student loan debt. Check your mailbox because the bills are coming. The Trump administration started its push to resume collections on defaulted student loans yesterday, threatening the financial health of millions of borrowers whose loans have gone belly up.
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According to the Education Department, about 5 million people fall into this category, with most having not made a payment since the pandemic. Millions more sit on the brink of default as well. Restarting student debt payments has been a major push of the Trump administration, in direct contrast to the Biden administration, who moved to forgive billions in loans.
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As to be expected, firing up collections and instituting penalties for not paying is is going to be an unwelcome financial burden for lots of Americans, sapping spending at a time when consumer confidence is already at a multi-year low.
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Credit scores are also under threat, with a new report from TransUnion saying that borrowers who previously had excellent credit may see their scores deemed by as much as 171 points. What comes next if you're one of those millions?
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Borrowers in default should have been notified by an email to contact the education department's default resolution group and take action, like making payments or entering a repayment plan to avoid harsher penalties. If you don't, the government may garnish wages or withhold tax refunds and benefits. Neil, an ominous Monday announcement for the 42 million Americans with federal student loans.
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Yeah. A student loan borrower enters default once they're behind on payments for more than 270 days. So that is kind of the magic number here. That's where that 5 million people come from. But 4 million people are on the brink of reaching that. So as we move into the summer, because the last kind of on-ramp period for getting rid of or for prolonging student loans was back in October 2024.
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So if you count forward, you start to realize that the summer is when that 270-day mark starts to hit, which is when you will see another flood of people kind of realizing that they were behind and or had defaulted on their student loans. So yeah, you start looking into the personal finance angle of this, and a lot of people are saying, hey, I would love to pay it back, but I cannot right now.
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I do not make enough, and they're going to start garnishing wages, and they're going to start dinging my credit score. So it is a little bit of a moment of panic for millions of Americans out there as they try to figure out how to navigate these murky waters ahead.
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Yes. One particular platform thinks I'm obsessed with Fabergé eggs.
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You can target buyers by industry, title, company, you name it. Everyone and their mom is on LinkedIn.
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LinkedIn will even 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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Speaking of heat, here's a hot take. Overpriced wireless plans shouldn't stand between my wallet and it thriving this summer.
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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.
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Neil, disaster level performance from Hulu here.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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One week ago, OpenAI debuted an AI helper that, with little oversight, could go buy you some Valentine's Day chocolates online if you asked it to. And then it dropped another tool that can scour the internet to conduct deep research about any topic of your choosing, maybe how to find a Valentine.
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And today, those so-called AI agents have made it into Toby's Trends, where I want to talk about the rise of AIs roaming the internet. The first tool I mentioned is called Operator, and it can shop for groceries or book a reservation online with minimal human input.
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A New York Times journalist took it out for a test drive and described how their cursor zoomed around the screen controlled by the AI to go buy some dog food, only stopping to ask for passwords and payment confirmation. OpenAI's latest tool, Deep Research, accomplishes in 10 minutes what would take a human many hours, according to the company.
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The company does see the tool as particularly useful for people who work in finance, science, law, or really anywhere else that spends time going deep on certain topics. But the reason I toss this into a Toby's Trends is that computers browsing computers is only going to grow more common.
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Google has quite literally already dropped a tool two months ago called Deep Research that can do the same thing as OpenAI's new release. And I expect we'll see more announcements coming down the pipeline as related to AI agents. Self-driving internet, Neil, as you actually framed it to me earlier, is fast arriving.
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Have you had Waffle House?
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Stock Market Flinches From Tariffs & AI Agents Are Everywhere
You could see how these tools could supercharge productivity. Remember, that's always been the promise of AI is that it will take productivity to another level because instead of taking hours to research an obscure scientific topic, you can do that in minutes now. So that is literally saving time.
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Stock Market Flinches From Tariffs & AI Agents Are Everywhere
Okay, my Waffle House. At 3 a.m.
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Stock Market Flinches From Tariffs & AI Agents Are Everywhere
But then also some cold water on these lofty claims is that a lot of researchers have pushed back and say you probably need to spend as much time verifying data the AI's research as you would just researching yourself because again, it is prone to hallucinations and it's not great at parsing through like what information is actually true online versus what is not true.
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Well, yeah, anything can be breakfast if you flip the script enough. I like putting the chocolate chips on the thin waffles and then adding a little bit of peanut butter as well. So that's my Waffle House hack. No eggs necessary. Let's take a moment to talk about our sponsor, Wise Business, the app for handling payments in multiple currencies.
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And then the other thing too, remember I talked about the New York Times journalist who took it out for a spin and said that it was almost like having the world's least confident assistant because it is constantly asking you, hey, can I do this? Can I do that? Because it doesn't want to, you know, overstep its bounds.
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So it ended up, you have to focus on it just as much as if it's not running in the background because you have to put in your credit card info. You have to say, yes, this is okay to do this. So it's not quite fully autonomous yet. So definitely some, you know, it's not quite there if you want to call it that because you still need to, you know, monitor it, but you see the promise in,
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Remember, State Farm actually chose not to renew fire insurance for about 1,600 customers in the Palisades in 2024. And it did raise questions about, yeah, how is the financial health of this company? One group that does think that State Farm is doing just fine is Consumer Watchdog, which is this LA-based advocacy group.
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They actually are disputing that State Farm is in any sort of financial trouble. They pointed to the fact that insurers made underwriting profits of $1.4 billion between 2020 and 2023. They say it has $134 billion in the bank right now. So they're saying you could absolutely cover these costs. But then State Farm is saying this is actually how insurance works.
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As, you know, the risk goes up in a certain area, prices have to go up as well. That is just a foundational way that insurance works. So higher risk should actually lead to, you know, more higher costs as well. So it is just tough, though, to see that headline of 22% increase for a community that is already, you know, reeling from the fallout of these fires. For our next headline news,
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Neil, yesterday I woke up and did the show with two completely different shoes on. How is that even possible? Did you not feel the difference? They were both Nikes, both running shoes. And anyways, you didn't even notice, which is why I bring it up. Imagine us as international business owners. I often do.
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Neil, it looks like you may be able to go watch your Eagles play in the Super Bowl after all because ticket prices for the big game are plummeting. The cheapest ticket has fallen 30% over the past week, bringing it down to prices that are 50% cheaper than last year's record-breaking Super Bowl.
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Now, I should say, the cheapest ticket is still insanely expensive, and picking one up on the secondary market will set you back about $4,000. Still, a little cheese fatigue combined with the fact that the game is being held in New Orleans instead of Vegas like last year, and you can see why prices are coming down from this stratosphere.
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I will never say that. What are some of these insights that they're finding, though? First of all, Chick-fil-A is just the absolute apex of the fast food service industry. One franchisee was looking at his franchise serving one car every 13 seconds, which is just insane, but they found that there were a few bottlenecks and a few issues. One worker was just doing way too much at the drive-thru.
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Managing payments in different currencies, euros, yen, pesos, it'd be a disaster to say the least.
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It was a veteran worker. They were shouldering too much of the load. And then another issue that they found is that the Wi-Fi used in the parking lot didn't extend far away enough for people to put their orders in. So it is really small tweaks that we're talking about here because Chick-fil-A is great right now, and the U.S. is just becoming a more drive-thru-centric country in general.
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Forty-three percent of fast food orders in the U.S. happen in drive-thru windows. So If you could increase efficiency by just that 5%, that 10% margin, it does lead to greater profit. Do you think you would be bored watching game film of a drive-thru, of cars go through a drive-thru? Well, it would be like watching a football game for me.
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I wouldn't even know what I'm looking at because I don't see the very small nuance of the details. But I do think the drones are a big unlock as well because in this article in the Wall Street Journal, they said Chick-fil-A managers used to stand on their roofs to get an aerial view. Now they have that drone footage. So, To answer your question, though, I would have no idea.
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Finally, when you go to the movies, there is an expectation that a bevy of previews will precede your feature film. It's part of the experience that when you show up for, say, an 8 p.m. start time, The actual movie won't start until 8.20 or so, but a Connecticut lawmaker is trying to challenge that assumption.
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A state senator from New Haven, Martin Looney, recently proposed a bill that would require theaters to list the actual start time of movies, not when the trailers for Fast and Furious 27 start. So going to book a movie, you might see something like The Brutalist, 8 p.m. then in parentheses, film starts at 8.14. Neil Looney told a local news outlet, it seems to be an abuse of people's time.
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If they want to get there early and watch the promos, they can. But if they want to just see the feature, they ought to be able to get there just in time for that.
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If you are a business owner and you have a lot on your plate, take one thing off with Wise Business. Make international payments simple. Head to wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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Stock Market Flinches From Tariffs & AI Agents Are Everywhere
I like it. It keeps the movie machine turning as well because you see a preview, you're like, wait a second, I want to go see that in the theaters, and then You go see that movie, you see another preview. So you need the previews to keep, you know, theaters running. And they need the revenue because they're struggling from COVID. So I like the movie theater preview.
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I also think it's great for the friend that always shows up late, too, because if you actually told them the correct start time, and they usually show up 15 minutes late, now they have that buffer of the preview, so it's great for your not-so-time-efficient friend.
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I want you to share it with your biggest group chat because like we said, Super Bowl tickets are all time low prices right now. So ask for a little Venmo donation and maybe you can join Neil and the Kelly Green hordes and go and watch the Super Bowl.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Stock Market Flinches From Tariffs & AI Agents Are Everywhere
By kicking the can down the road once again, Trump is kind of showing the U.S. to have this reputation for maybe stopping short on actually falling through on some of these promises. So far, I mean, I've seen headlines that it's been more art of the deal than actual tariffs being slapped on these countries.
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Proponents and supporters of Trump will say, hey, look it, we got the concessions that we were after. But then you can look at the concessions and say, wait a minute, they're not as big as potentially that concession. the tariffs that were threatened, you would expect the concessions to be. And I mean, some of the things that Mexico did, they've done in the past before.
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Stock Market Flinches From Tariffs & AI Agents Are Everywhere
They've done this multiple times, pledging 10,000 troops to secure the border. They did it in Trump's first term. They did it during Biden's term. And now they're doing it again under the threat of tariffs. The U.S. is developing this reputation for not actually falling through. And President Trump is developing a reputation for not fully falling through on his threats of tariffs.
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Then, should the U.S. start a sovereign wealth fund? President Trump seems to think so. It's Tuesday, February 4th. Let's ride. Good morning, I hope everyone is having an egg-cellent Tuesday. I have some bad news for anyone on a road trip through the south right now.
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A lot of American allies are saying, all right, we're just going to trade amongst ourselves more. Obviously, you can't ignore the U.S. The U.S. is the biggest consuming nation in the world, so you can't just completely cut them out of trades. But you are seeing more U.S. allies make trade deals that kind of skirt the U.S.
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The European Union has done three trade deals in the last two months that have not involved the U.S. at all. They did a big one with some South American countries. So obviously you can't fully ignore the U.S. because of just how big we are. It's not anyone's preference to not trade with the U.S., but if the U.S.
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does prove to be such, as you put it, an unreliable trade partner, then you are going to see more of these deals.
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For our next story, $40 billion in U.S. foreign aid has been put on hold after President Trump and Elon Musk agreed that the U.S. Agency for International Development should be shut down. Two USAID directors were placed on administrative leave over the weekend after refusing to turn over sensitive info to Musk and Doge.
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And in their place steps in new Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who, as of yesterday, is the acting administrator of the agency that appears to be doomed for closure. Despite strong pushback from Democrats against Guantanamo, gutting the agency responsible for everything from humanitarian efforts in Ukraine to health initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Employees were seen cleaning out their desks yesterday after being told not to report to work anymore. Neal, critics say that Trump lacks constitutional authority to fully shut down USAID without help from Congress. But Trump pushed back on that idea, saying when it comes to fraud, he doesn't need approval. This has left a lot of international aid efforts in the lurch in the meantime.
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Waffle House is adding a 50 cent per egg surcharge across its 2,000 locations as the chain deals with increased egg costs associated with ongoing shortages linked to bird flu. That means your classic all-star breakfast combo that comes with a waffle, bacon, sausage, or ham, hash browns, and two eggs, any style, will set you back an extra buck.
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And then meanwhile, too, it does leave a lot of these contract workers just, I called it, in the lurch because they don't know what their future entails right now because USAID had 10,000 employees but also numerous contractors working with it, health contractors spread across the globe. So they're saying, all right, what do we do now? So you are correct, too, that even though U.S.
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aid as a portion of the federal budget is a lot smaller. I mean, $40 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but when in context of the entire federal budget, it is rather small. But that soft power, the fact that the U.S. is stepping into these places to also fend off China from doing the exact same, it does shake up the geopolitical world in ways that it probably goes above the actual dollar amount.
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It is easy to understand the allure of a sovereign wealth fund because in theory, it allows the government to put cash towards strategic aims without having to actually raise taxes on its citizens. In practice, that balance is actually a lot harder to achieve because in America, it is tough. We do not run a budget surplus right now.
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Deficit. So where is that money coming from? And then also when you choose to allocate money to a sovereign wealth fund, that means you are also choosing to not allocate it towards something else.
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So maybe should that money instead go towards, you know, improving highways or funding public education or something else than just putting it in a fund to invest in strategic things like, you know, TikTok or something like that. But then, you know, Howard Lutnick also is on board with this as well. He said that it could be used to facilitate the sale of TikTok.
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Neil, are you paying extra for a little yolk action, or is this something that would make you go egg-free?
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He also called out, you know, during COVID when they are buying a two billion vaccines from these companies. So they also take a stake in those companies as well. So he's the commerce secretary nominee. the Commerce Secretary nominee, Howard Lutnick.
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So you can see where this would fit into some of these deals, but also it's just not something that you immediately think of that would be helpful for a country like America. Finally, the Panama Canal has found itself on the wrong end of a Trump administration ultimatum after Marco Rubio traveled to the critical waterway to try and, quote, change the status quo.
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The status quo Trump is upset with is the level of Chinese influence over the critical trade route. Rubio was able to win significant concessions on that front, with Panama's president declaring after the meeting that his country won't renew a 2017 infrastructure funding agreement with Beijing.
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Trump has threatened to seize control of the canal, but Panama's president, Jose Molino, downplayed the tensions between his country and the U.S., while also reiterating the fact that the canal is not up for negotiation. Neil, most new secretaries of state take a trip over to London or another cushy ally for their first official overseas visit, but not Rubio.
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The focus on Panama shows the new diplomatic priorities of this administration.
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Up next, let's put a little pep in your step because Toby's Trends is coming your way. 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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Do you think Friends was a good show? But a new question has emerged that Gen Z answers in a very specific way. Do you want to start a bar tab? To which they often answer, no. And it's that reluctance that I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. There is a growing cohort of Gen Z bar goers who simply refuse to open a tab.
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Their aversion is the subject of a recent New York Times article that chronicled how many 20-somethings are opting to close out after every single overpriced Allagash White rather than keep their tab running. One explanation for their tab trepidation is that younger drinkers consume less alcohol, so they're fine with one and done transactions.
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Also, tap to pay has become so ubiquitous that buying around falls into the same muscle memory as buying your morning coffee. Mainly, though, they don't like carrying around that extra mental weight. It increases anxiety in me when I leave a tab open, a 26-year-old beer sales rep told the Times. If we want to move somewhere else, it's a lot harder to close out and then leave."
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
You know, the business angle of this is that Gen Z actually is drinking less than previous generations, with a 2023 Gallup poll showing a 10 point decline over the past few decades in the share of 18 to 34 year olds who report consuming alcohol. So the reticence to an open tab is downstream of that. But also maybe they're just shy. What do you think of this shift in bar etiquette, Neil?
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Does Gen Z have a point or do they need to loosen up a little bit?
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The hurricane season in one corner and the Saharan dust cloud in the other. As Jason Dunnian, a meteorologist, told the New York Times, Mother Nature is fascinating. It set up the Saharan dust factory right next to the hurricane nursery. So shout out Mother Nature. Pretty neat, Neil. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. Neil, I just finished up my fantasy Premier League season.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
That's fair. It is on brand for Gen Z, though, because one, they think that it mentally just stops them from getting too carried away on a night out because every time you have to pay and then close out, that's another drink that's hitting just your mind, essentially. Like, you know it's a very conscious action rather than just having this amorphous tab open.
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And if you are trying to drink less and if you're trying to be more budget conscious, those are two factors that do lead to this sort of behavior. That tap to card moment too is something they don't even, a lot of people don't even go out with their credit cards. They still, they just use fully Apple pay. And that is kind of something that comes downstream of the pandemic, this behavior.
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So you can see where it arose from, whether you think it's good or bad. Neil falls in the bad category. So do most bartenders who, Honestly, they get confronted by these hordes of young people who haven't even thought about opening a tab. A lot of people say like, oh, I'll close it later. And they go, what do you mean you'll close it later? That's what a tab is. You either open it or close it.
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Just tell me what to do. So some of these bartenders are saying like we have to politely bully these kids into figuring out what proper bar etiquette is because maybe they just didn't get that conditioning when the pandemic was going on. So just a fascinating generational difference. Let us know maybe in the comments or in emails where you fall on this because it is sort of a generational divide.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
It's a fascinating tie. And Campbell's is just a very interesting company in general because they also have a snack division, think Goldfish. And they said that what the gains they've seen in their soup and food division was offset by losses in their snack division, where people are becoming a little more choiceful, a little choosier, and not splurging on snacks like Goldfish.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
opting instead eating at home, eating their cream of mushroom soup. So Campbell's is a fascinating company that does reveal a lot about consumer preferences and the fact that they're cutting back on discretionary sack purchases and cooking more meals at home. Yeah, it may be a little bit of an economic indicator.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Aldi, the low-cost grocery chain, is in hot water for doing something your middle school teacher would be disappointed in, copying someone else's work. The snack giant Mondelez is suing Aldi, alleging that the grocer's low-cost store brand snack packaging blatantly copies Mondelez's whole flow.
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I'm not going to lie. Had a bit of a rough year.
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It said Aldi's cookie and cracker packaging was likely to deceive and confuse consumers, which is hard to deny when you see some of these side-by-side images. Aldi's Nutter Butter dupe says peanut butter cream-filled cookies instead, but has the same iconic red packaging. Its Chips Ahoy knockoff also sports a big cookie on the front, framed by a blue background.
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And its original chocolate sandwich cookies with vanilla filling look suspiciously like Mondelez's Oreo packaging. Neil, these in-store brands try to push it as close to the line as possible, but this time, Modelist thinks Aldi has taken it a little too far.
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If I may vent a little, my issue was targeting the wrong people. I rode the Erling Haaland train for too long when I should have been on the Mo Salah Express.
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Yeah, I mean, online dating has led to this moment in general because when you're just swiping on someone on a phone, the primary sorting factor you have is just their physical appearance, look, size, etc. So that's been the primary factor over this last generation of dating. So, of course, a filter is going to come downstream of that. And Tinder is not the only company that has done this.
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Hinge and other... dating apps have also allowed this filter but tinder just is kind of one of the biggest names in the biz which is why we're talking about it right now so yeah i mean short king summer is on pause for now but that just gives you more license to go spit game in person anymore because there's no height filters in real life just go talk talk to someone and see how it goes
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The highest active volcano in Europe erupted yesterday, sending ash flying and tourists scattering. Mount Etna in Sicily is a major tourist attraction visited by 1.5 million people every year. But travelers got a lot more than they bargained for on Monday when a sudden loud boom sent a plume of hot gas, ash, and rocks several kilometers high into the air in its biggest eruption since 2014.
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Etna is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and more often than not, eruptions stop as soon as they start, with this latest one posing no danger to the population, according to the president of the Sicilian region. No one was injured, and nearby airports remain open as well. Still, Neil, it's feeling a little too close to 79 AD out here, with a powerful Italian volcano erupting.
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With LinkedIn ads, you can target by job title, industry and company and more. So, you know, you're reaching the right people and doing it efficiently instead of overpaying for a man city striker who couldn't score any goals this year.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Fair enough. Head to LinkedIn.com slash MBD to get started. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Yeah, if there's one takeaway for this is look at me because I'm a boomerang hired to Morning Brew. Neil originally hired me, I left, and then I stayed on good terms with my co-host and now look at us, we're hosting a podcast together. But yeah, I think what it shows is a job market that just is in search of stability rather than anything new because... What does a boomerang hire represents?
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It represents someone that the employer knows, and it also represents a company that the employee knows very well. So that kind of two-way street leads to just a much smoother hiring process.
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Job prospects don't want to be out testing this slightly fuzzy job market for too long, and employers don't necessarily want to go and have to retrain and rehire a whole new person who doesn't know the company culture. So You're getting a lot of great bang for your buck when you target these returning employees.
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So it's a fascinating thing where it's almost like going back to your ex because it's just what's comfortable to you. Maybe it's the right decision. Maybe it's not. But in this current job market, it seems to be the right decision for both sides of employer and employee.
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And then one final aspect that makes boomerang hires more common in the modern job market than before is that a lot of people are not moving to start a new job. Think back a few generations ago, if you got a new job, oftentimes you had to pick up your family. You had to move across the country and go work in person, work in an office.
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But now given the rise of remote work, when you took that new job, when you do, partook in the great resignation, you probably just stayed exactly where you were. So there was no, you know, material factors, geographical factors that made it a barrier to reenter the job market at the same job you just had. So it's just fascinating. And then you just toss in housing prices.
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Then the chain restaurants you grew up going to are making a comeback led by none other than Red Robin. It's Tuesday, June 3rd. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Well, a lot of people weren't moving because of that. So it made it very easy to just say, Hey guys, like, remember me, you just knock back on the virtual office door because you never moved in the first place. Let's move on. Meta thinks it has a use case for AI beyond pretending to be your friend, and it's making ads.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Meta already offers some AI tools to generate variations of existing ads, but the company thinks it's on track to enable brands to fully create and target ads using AI by the end of next year, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
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If you are a new pickleball shoe brand, for instance, you could input a product image and budget, then lean on meta to generate a full slate of ads, soup to nuts, including images, video, and text. But it doesn't stop there. It would also then enable you to target specific Facebook and Instagram users with scary levels of precision.
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For example, one layer of personalization that AI could help with is location optimization. so a pickleball player in SoCal might see an image with palm trees, while a New York City-based customer might be targeted by an image showing the Knicks losing, I mean, someone playing pickleball in a city.
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Meta sees this as a huge unlock for small to medium-sized businesses who can afford to make more in-depth ads that don't require the big production crews used by larger companies. But it's also a big boon for Meta, who generated 97% of its overall revenue from advertising last year.
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Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
This idea of a full stack service supporting both ad creation and targeting is sort of a white whale in the ad industry, one that Meta thinks it can crack sooner rather than later.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
The positioning of it is interesting, though, because a lot of this is geared more towards small and medium-sized businesses who can't afford going to Wiedenkenny, who can't afford going to Omnicom and saying, hey, this is our budget. It's millions of dollars. Now go make us something. It's more for the pickleball shoe company founders who...
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
don't have a lot of money to play with, but they do want to create some high quality creative. So Meta thinks that, hey, you can input, hey, here's my shoe. I want it on the background of a pickleball court and I want it to be in Southern California. The AI can then go in and make it for you, but then it can also go out and target it because you gave it the budget.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
So that for small businesses is a big unlock in the advertising game. It was fascinating though, to see these big advertising firms fall because you would think that they are a little bit, insulated from that, but maybe as AI progresses, it will start to eat into those big production budgets. Right now, the issue is the quality isn't there for someone like Coke.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Coke doesn't necessarily want to use AI, even though I'm eating my words because they did roll out a fully AI-generated ad. It does seem like it is targeted more towards smaller people who are okay with maybe a little bit of loss in quality in exchange for just what it frees them up to do.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Yeah, these chains are like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, the young people are noticing us right now. What do we do? Because for a long time, their core customer base has been boomers, been Gen X. Gen Z only makes up 17% of patrons at sit-down, mid-price, casual dining establishments in 2024. So it's a bit of a risk-reward scenario that these restaurants are weighing right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Do we go all in and try to cater to these young people that only make up 17% of our business? at the expense of maybe pissing off, for lack of a better word, these older people who don't want to see any changes to menus. They don't want to see any forward thinking.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
They just want to know what they've been getting for the last decade or so is what they're going to get when they sit down at a Red Lobster, at a Red Robin, et cetera. So it is kind of this thing where they've got this new crowd of people potentially coming in, but it's not necessarily something they can mortgage their whole future and bet fully on young people.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Yeah, a lot of analysts are like, no amount of endless shrimp deals, no amount of new menu changes will recreate the feeling of sitting down with your grandma after a soccer tournament or something like that. So nostalgia only goes so far. You do have to meet young diners where they're at, which usually is updated in new menu items. Up next, let's talk about Toby's Trends.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
That ad for a lawnmower as someone who lives in a yardless New York City apartment definitely wasn't meant for me.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
With LinkedIn ads, you'll get access to their network of 1 billion plus professionals, and you can even target your buyers by job title, industry role, seniority, and company.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Yeah, it's bad news for sunbathers, but the dust storm is actually good news for this year's Atlantic hurricane season, which began on Sunday. What characterizes a giant Sahara dust cloud? Very dry air. What do hurricanes or tropical storms need to form? Moisture. So you're seeing this natural tug of war between Mother Nature and
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Try it out for yourself. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit to help you get started. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
This makes it easier than ever to manage your money all in one place. You can conveniently sign up for checking and payments in one seamless process and keep your money moving from sale to spend.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta Wants AI to Create Ads & Gen Z Could Save Chain Restaurants?
Head to www.squareup.com slash debit card to get started. That's www.squareup.com slash debit card. Block Inc. is a financial services platform and not an FDIC-insured bank. Square Debit Card is issued by Sutton Bank, member FDIC, pursuant to a license from MasterCard. There are a lot of questions that reveal generational differences. Do you wear high socks or low? Can you afford a house or not?
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
If you've ever left a meeting and thought to yourself, did he just say that? Or maybe you've had a tense one-on-one with your boss that made a promotion feel even further away. Those are perfect fodder for the Am I an A-Hole situation. segment.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
If you are looking for answers, some people open up Google, some people look to ChatGPT, but increasingly, people are turning to one of the oldest sources of truth in the world, the Bible. And it's the suddenly booming Bible industry that I want to talk about on today's edition of Toby's Trends. Bible sales are up
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
22% this year, according to the book tracker Sarkana, bucking a trend in the wider book industry where sales are up just 1% over the same period. But interestingly enough, demand for Bibles is growing despite religion increasingly taking a backseat in people's lives. Pew found that just over a quarter of adults in the US now consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, up from over 15% in 2007.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Despite that, Bible sales have been steadily rising, jumping from 9.7 million in 2019 to reach 14.2 million last year. So there are two ways industry insiders are looking at this trend. First, Jeff Crosby, president of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association said, it all stems from a quote, desire for assurance that we're going to be okay.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
But Mark Bertrand, the founder of a Bible design site, has a more cynical view saying, a lot of smart people are thinking about Bible marketing now, which could be leading to a jump in sales rather than a craving for knowledge of scripture. So Neil, Bible sales are going up, But the reason might not be so cut and dry.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Oh, tons of different Bibles are out there. There's one retailer called Faith and Life. It offers more than 270 different versions of the Bible. They range all the way from a $7.99 pocket-sized New Testament all the way up to that leather-bound book that you described. That's $95. There's audiobooks. There's books bound in goatskin. There's books or Bibles marketed towards teens and early readers.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
So there's definitely a big marketing boom around Bibles. One aspect of this too that we have to talk about is that there's been this collision of TikTok accounts also promoting Bibles. It's almost like cousin to BookTok, which we've talked about a lot, where romantically books have popped off a little different in terms of content, but a similar mechanism just with different subject matter.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Plus, I think the customization aspect of the modern Bible industry appeals to people. You can see why, I mean, we've talked about Stanley Cup crazes where people want to collect things and adorn them with different things. Similar things are happening in the Bible industry as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
So I think it's a confluence of a lot of factors with a general undertone that, of course, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Drop us some tea at morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com and we'll anonymously help you work through your workplace conundrums and questions. That's morningbrewdailyatmorningbrew.com. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, some of our listeners don't know this, but we actually have a YouTube version of the podcast where you can come see our smiling faces every morning.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
I tell you someone who is celebrating though, and that is the lawyers. As part of the ruling, McCormick did approve $345 million in attorney fees for the lawyers who worked on behalf of Tesla shareholders in order to avoid this pay plan. Musk is extremely mad because the lawyers that took away his pay package are now getting paid. That being said, Elon Musk is doing all right financially. He's
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
more than $43 billion richer since Donald Trump won the election in November. At today's stock price, that 2018 package would have risen to be worth around $101 billion. So again, you could be upset that you got that taken away from you, but honestly, He is the richest man in the world and is doing okay.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Now here's a headline you probably didn't expect to read in 2024. Enron is back. An ex-account under the handle at Enron posted a weird promotional video yesterday setting off a string of questions. Was the energy company that famously collapsed over two decades ago really staging a modern comeback? Pretty quickly, internet sleuths found out that the answer was likely no.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Publicly available documents show that an LLC called The College Company bought the Enron trademark for $275 back in 2020. The co-founder of that company is the same person behind the mock conspiracy theory, birds aren't real. So what we're dealing with here is likely some sort of publicity stunt.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
If you go to Enron.com, you'll see a snazzy new site full of smiling faces and corporate platitudes, as well as a timer that shows about six days to go until they have something very special to introduce. But as of now, that something special looks like merch and possibly a crypto token, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
It was funny to me that people are like born too late to be rugged by the original Enron, but born just in time to be rugged by Enron rebranding as a crypto token. So time is a flat circle here. So if anything, people are paying attention.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
You can watch their morning shows like the morning brief or opening bid or get deeper in the weeds with specific investing related insights.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
I tell you what, instead of defense against the dark arts, Hogwarts should have been teaching personal finance. Instead of potion making, Snape should have taught bookkeeping. Accio Horcrux, more like Accio, a few bucks. But honestly, I feel bad for the guy. Here you are facing a multi-million dollar tax bill and all people can do is make Harry Potter jokes.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
So I am sorry, Ron, of all the Harry Potters for this to happen to. Of course, it was going to be Ron Weasley. Well, it's December, which means we have our first word of the year awardee. And according to Oxford Press, 2024 was defined by brain rot. If you don't know what brain rot is, congrats for not having it.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
It's a catch-all term for the type of internet content your younger cousin likely quoted at Thanksgiving dinner this year. Examples include skibbity toilet videos, a persistent meme about Ohio being weird. or just general mind-numbing content usually originating from a short-form video platform like TikTok.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Even saying this out loud, Neil, I feel like I'm giving people brain rot, but the word saw a 230% rise this year and beat out other terms like demure, slop, dynamic pricing, romanticism, and lore. Is it a worthy champion for word of the year?
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
And rumor has it that hair and makeup actually shows up for Yahoo Finance's video team, so it's got that going for it.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
It is the perfect encapsulation. When you come across a brain rot video, you absolutely know it. And I do think it is a perfect catch-all term for kind of the content that exuded out of the internet this year. So unfortunately, I was cursed with a little bit of brain rot in my algorithm. So I don't know what that says about us, Neil. But I'm on the brain rot patrol. You can stay above the mud.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
I want you to share the pod with someone who has brain rot. Yep, if you have a friend who dooms girls for breakfast and binges the Costco guys for dinner, who knows what's going on on the Talk Tua podcast and earnestly keeps up with Logan Paul, please, please send them Morning Brew daily.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
investors that have been beaten down by Intel's cratering share price were happy about the move. They sent Intel stock up about 4% on the day, showing how they lost confidence in Gelsinger. Still, the company has lost about half of its value this year, and it's lost all of its reputation as America's chip-making champion on the world stage.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
So, Neil, what went so wrong here, and was it entirely on Gelsinger?
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Yeah. It's almost like you have this twin sibling in Nvidia that just overshadows you at every turn. That is part of the reason why Gelsinger's term will not be looked at favorably is that you had Nvidia become the most valuable company in the world. It's now 33 times larger than Intel's market cap. So that just is always in comparison. You're always going to look bad.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
One thing that Gelsinger did try to do is make this very expensive bid, this very, you know, uh, incredibly risky transition of the company's business model. They wanted to be on the level of chip making giants like TSMC and actually fabricate the physical chips themselves. That has been central to, it lined up very well with the Biden administration's agenda as well, though.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
They wanted to revitalize American chip manufacturing on American soil. So that was a bet that Gelsinger made. It could still pay off. This is a long and lengthy transition. It's a long and expensive process. So maybe down the line they'll say that Gelsinger actually laid the foundation for this shift.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
But right now it's not looking too great for Intel, especially when you compare it to its high-flying twin brother, NVIDIA.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Yeah, definitely not a great year for Stellantis. A lot of their dealerships have been complaining of inventory bloat where these cars are just sitting on the lot. They've kind of made some miscalculations in the North American market. Their cars are a lot more expensive than any of the other cars on the market right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
And they also just have some brands that are kind of stalling out a little bit. Jeep and Ram have had some good sales momentum in recent years. Jeep is always going to be an iconic brand, but Chrysler is another brand that they own. It only has one product on offer right now. Shout out Pacifica minivan owners. And then also Maserati is another one of their brands. It's their luxury brand.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
They've seen sales plummet 60% compared to a year ago. So they have sort of these zombie lines that aren't selling very well. And while Tavares was seen as kind of this auto industry brand, kind of whisperer when he brought all these brands together under one brand of Stellantis. Now it looks like some of those are just dead weight at this point.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
If the lines were too long at your local mall and Amazon just ain't hitting like it used to, you might have found yourself perusing TikTok shop this holiday shopping period. On Black Friday, the social media app turned e-commerce platform did over $100 million in U.S. sales. Success stories from brands poured in thick and fast.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Then TikTok shop had a Black Friday to remember. Is it actually a threat to dethrone Amazon? It's Tuesday, December 3rd. Let's ride. Your favorite suit.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Canvas Beauty, a cosmetics company, said it sold over 100,000 products, including $2 million worth alone on a single live stream. Those numbers are music to the ears of TikTok, who has been pushing sellers and creators towards the live stream format for 15 months now, trying to recreate the success of live shopping that they've seen over in China. Now, a little perspective is in order here.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Overall Black Friday sales in the U.S. hit just under $11 billion this year, so TikTok is still a small slice of the pumpkin pie. Gross merchandise volume on the app is expected to double to reach $50 billion this year, but still small fries compared to Amazon's expected $757 billion haul.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
But TikTok is also in a race against the clock if it wants to close the gap, as it could get banned as soon as January next year. For now, though, brands are taking every sale they can get.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Let's talk about that potential. Dunyan, the sister app of TikTok over in China, made over $200 billion during live stream. So clearly the market is there if you can get the format to catch on. And it does look like One way to imagine TikTok is Gen Z version of QVC, which is QVC was that program where people just come on and explain products.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
You could buy them directly by calling a number on your TV screen. Now it's even quicker. You can just press a button within an app. So technically the groundwork is laid there. It has run into some issues, though, because part of the reason people don't like it is it's almost an insignification of the app.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Instead of just scrolling through videos that were served up to you by the algorithm, now every fourth video, every fifth video is a undercover ad, if you will, these creators hawking a product that maybe you want, maybe you don't want. So it has been a little bit of a curve to get the audience on board with it. But if you can... Kind of normalize it. Yes, obviously the sky's the limit here.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
That being said, though, brands like Puma, L'Oreal, Nike, and Crocs are selling on there, so clearly they are attracting those bluer chips, those bigger names. We'll see if it just is a rising tide that becomes a major channel for a lot of these brands, or if it's just something that happens over in China but can't quite catch a foothold in the U.S.,
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Yeah, I think one of the issues that the FDA really has with these flavored vaping products is that they don't want them to appeal to kids. That is something that they think that they've made very clear because the flavors of these vapes, I just have to read some of them out loud. Pink Lemonade, Rainbow Road, Jimmy the Juice Man, Peachy Strawberry, Suicide Bunny, Mother's Milk and Cookies.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
So these are products that the FDA is looking at and saying, Maybe there's an audience for them in the adult category, but I think if you are looking to attract people with a name like Rainbow Row, you're probably targeting kids, and that is something the FDA really doesn't like.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
So they have repeatedly declined to approve these flavored vapes because they don't want to encourage young people to use tobacco products, to use vaping products like that. But the companies are like, hey, FDA, you have got it wrong there. These flavored vapes are just out there to help people stop smoking and stop moving the goalposts on us.
Morning Brew Daily
Intel Ousts CEO & TikTok Shop Banks $100M in One Day?
Just we will abide by your rules as long as you make them clear to us. But the FDA can come back and say, hey, vapes are still a pretty new product. It takes time to drop regulations around them. So you can see why everyone is very contentious about this and why it's made it all the way to the Supreme Court at this point.
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
That actually sounds very reassuring, but what if I still get stuck halfway through?
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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?
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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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AI Coming for Fashion Models? & Travelers Scramble for REAL IDs
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
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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Well, I think you'll actually see longer ones because even though it costs $8 million for 30 seconds, a bunch of advertising execs around the industry said that some of these companies have fallen in love with their creative. They want to tell these longer narrative stories. Think those heart-wrenching commercials you see from...
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So we'll be keeping an eye on things as more updates come in throughout the morning and our thoughts go out to the figure skating community and anyone else affected by this crash. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, big earnings day yesterday. Meta, Microsoft, Tesla, oh my.
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Budweiser, stuff like that, where it does tell a story over the course of 60 seconds. So even though we are seeing record prices for 30-second ad spots, I do think you'll expect to see a couple of longer ads this Super Bowl.
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It is pretty electric that he reached this milestone without really releasing any of his own solo music. I mean, the collabs do slap. Like, let's be honest, the man has not been just sitting back on his hindquarters here. He has been releasing banger after banger. I mean, die with a smile always. already has 1.7 billion Spotify streams since it was released last summer. It is pretty insane.
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He's just been chilling in Vegas, too. He's been at this residency for so long that there started to become rumors that he must have a gambling debt or something. The number that was tossed out is that he owes Vegas $50 million that he was paying off through performing there because he's been in residency at the Park MGM for so long that they're like, there must be something else here. I
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
All he does is, you know, live in Vegas, perform in Vegas, release incredible collab and make a lot of money and make a lot of streams.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
Neil, unfathomable six and a half rotations. This is where I actually feel very badly that we are mainly a podcast medium, not a visual medium, because you have to see this to believe it. I highly encourage you guys either go on social media and look this up or go to our YouTube channel and watch it because the man just keeps on spinning.
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Every time you think, oh, surely this is the last spin, there's one more rotation to go with it. And Ogiwara has been amazing. a phenom for a long time. In 2022, when he was 16 years old, he landed a 2160, which is six full rotations. It took him three years to add that extra half rotation, but the man is absolutely just a stunning athlete and one of the... I am...
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Host it in front of the New York Stock Exchange. I see the vision. It would be electric. I do too, but until you spin that up, Yahoo Finance can fill the void. Instead of Neil's panelists, you can head to its research tab to get investment ideas or give its dedicated earnings page a skim to see how the market is digesting the news. Still want to make my idea a thing, though.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
at a loss for words at how much he spins.
Morning Brew Daily
Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
What's crazy, though, is that he got a score of 97.33. 100 is obviously perfect. And I'm like, what else does the man have to do? I guess get the seven full spins to get that 100. Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines from yesterday's news.
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The memo Trump's budget office sent out earlier this week to freeze all spending on federal loans and grants was rescinded yesterday after two days of confusion and legal challenges. Officials said the pause was put in place so the administration could review whether the spending that flows out of Washington aligned with Trump's goals related to climate change and DEI programs.
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But then Trump's pause was paused itself by a federal judge until at least this upcoming Monday before being rescinded altogether yesterday. Neil, I think this shows that even with immense control of Washington, there are limits to what Trump can do when it comes to remaking the federal government.
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I mean, it is better that we only moved one second this time instead of the 10 seconds the previous time. But I was digging into who the bulletin of atomic scientists are. Why are they the ones that are controlling the doomsday clock? And it was actually a nonprofit that was founded all the way back in 1945 by Albert Einstein and the former Manhattan Project scientists.
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Shortly after we dropped the atomic bomb, they wanted to be this nonprofit that focuses on Issues that pose a risk to humanity. You can see why Albert Einstein and the Manhattan Project was involved with that. So they've created this very apt metaphor for visualizing how close we are to disaster. You never want to see it moving forward. You never want to see it moving closer to midnight.
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But they look at the main factors of climate change, nuclear proliferation, and disruptive technologies. What's the big disruptive technology we are living through right now? It is AI. So you can see why we are inching closer to that midnight number. Now, it is widely mocked. Right. Again, it's a metaphor. It's not something that is based off of hard, in fact, evidence.
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Hey, you go set up shop in front of the New York Stock Exchange and people will come, Neil. I am sure of it. In the meantime, though, you guys can head to yahoofinance.com to get your daily market digest. OpenAI has decided that it doesn't really like the taste of its own medicine.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
But the fact that it's called the Doomsday Clock, the fact that you have this clock metaphor, I do think is something that, yeah, I don't know, people kind of look at at least. The number one golfer in the world is returning to action today at historic Pebble Beach after recovering from an unconventional injury.
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Scotty Scheffler missed the first two tournaments of the year because he hurt his hand making ravioli with his family. Scheffler said he and the fam got a hankering for pasta made from scratch, so they rolled the dough out but didn't have the right tools to cook. cut the pasta, enter a fateful wine glass.
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Scheffler was using the top of the glass to carve out the pasta before it broke and thrust the stem into his hand. It could have been a lot worse, Scheffler said. I actually talked to someone who did the exact same thing and the stem went straight through their hand.
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But Scheffler has healed up and is now back in action, ready to build on the best season we've seen on the PGA Tour since prime Tiger Woods. No more ravioli for him, though.
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I know Rory McIlroy, one of his arrivals on the PGA Tour said, I think you made enough money to hire a chef. Why are you cooking for yourself? And Scheffler did make enough money. He made over $62 million playing golf last year.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
I want you to not listen to Neil's advice and share the podcast with someone that you would want to make ravioli with. It's not the same as getting it from your local takeout place. Go get the right tools, though. Make some pasta and share the pod.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
The AI leader and its largest investor, Microsoft, are investigating whether the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek stole OpenAI's data to build the buzzy R1 model that caused a $1 trillion wipeout in U.S. stocks this week. Microsoft said its researchers detected large amounts of data were leaving via OpenAI developer accounts late last year.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
OpenAI allows devs to use its API to integrate its model within their own applications. For instance, the AI-powered search engine Perplexity allows you to search the web using ChatGPT-4. But you are not allowed to train one model on another, a technique called distillation that goes against OpenAI's terms of service. Now, Neil, the irony is rich here.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
Critics have pointed out that OpenAI built its whole company on scraping the internet of information without consent. So the fact that it is now accusing DeepSeek of stealing is pretty hypocritical. And all this news was breaking as big tech companies like Meta and Microsoft reported earnings yesterday. The week of DeepSeek just keeps carrying on.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
Yeah, OpenAI has not provided a lot of details around the evidence that it found, but President Trump's AI czar, David Sachs, that he named, said it is definitely possible that IP theft exists. had occurred, he said, there's substantial evidence that what DeepSeek did here is they distilled knowledge out of OpenAI models. There's that distillation that you were describing.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
So it is a little bit of a red flag here because it's a red flag for DeepSeek potentially that maybe that their breakthrough was too good to be true. They were doing something that goes against OpenAI's terms of service. But I do think it is funny too that Microsoft's
Morning Brew Daily
Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
Security researchers were looking through the data like, wait a second, why is so much data being exfiltrated through these developer accounts? Which again, OpenAI allows you to set up developer accounts. They want other companies to build on top of their models, but they don't want you training another model directly on their own outputs.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
So it is kind of this trail of breadcrumbs that they think leads to DeepSeek. And it's just another layer in this big China versus US AI race that has really come to the forefront in the last week or so.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
Then it was a tense three and a half hours in D.C. as RFK Jr. interviewed for the nation's top health job. It's Wednesday, January 30th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Yeah, Meta expects its total expenses for 2025 to come in between $114 billion and $119 billion. The bulk of those obviously going towards infrastructure costs, which are those chips that you described. Pretty crazy, though, to think that we're talking hundreds of billion dollars in capital expenditures here as well. Meta also dropped that its chatbot surpassed 700 million monthly active users.
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And Zuckerberg did say, hey, when something reaches a scale of that source, it's usually a pretty durable thing that we built here. So Meta low-key is doing just fine in the AI race. That is almost a billion users of its chatbot, more than any other assistant out there as well. So pretty solid earnings call, even when you consider all the drama going on with DeepSeek.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick for health secretary, had his first Senate confirmation hearing yesterday, and it was as controversial as his views on vaccines and raw milk.
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In his opening remarks, RFK tried to assure lawmakers that he was not anti-vaccine, but instead pro-safety, arguing that his stances have been misinterpreted, though senators did read several of his own anti-vaccine comments back to him. RFK also seemed to struggle when asked about Medicare and Medicaid, the two most important insurance programs he would oversee as health secretary.
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In recent months, Kennedy has shifted his focus away from controversial ideas about vaccines and towards more popular talking points like combating chronic disease and ditching highly processed foods that make up the American diet. Those views have made corporate America skittish about his nomination, giving his longstanding criticism of Big Food, Big Pharma,
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and Big Ag for contributing to the unhealthy lifestyles of Americans. Neil, his nomination teeters on a razor's edge. If all Senate Democrats vote against his nomination, as is expected, then he can afford to lose only three Republican votes.
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Right. So that is why he kind of tried to steer the conversation towards this idea of this objective of making America healthy again. But he did kind of stop short of saying, I'm going to take unhealthy foods off the shelves. He did say that he would do more to explore the link between unhealthy foods and disease, but he doesn't want to actually take those foods away from everyone.
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And one of the reasons why is because he said, if you like a cheeseburger, A McDonald's cheeseburger or a Diet Coke, which my boss loves. His boss, obviously, presuming to be Donald Trump. You should be able to get them. So that caused kind of a laugh to ripple through.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
But it does show kind of the juxtaposition of his healthy initiative and maybe some of the things that Donald Trump has been famous for eating. Another thing that... people and the senators definitely wanted to press him on was his knowledge of Medicare and Medicaid because, again, Medicare and Medicaid affect 100 million people in the United States.
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And he was pressed on just his familiarity with the organization. He said some things about premium and deductibles that didn't really apply to many of the enrollees that he was speaking of. So there was a former Doctors of America president that was sitting there in the first row and And she said it was clear from watching that he did not know basic facts about Medicare and Medicaid.
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And he argued that a lot of the things he was describing wasn't even as purviewed together. So definitely some criticism of this. But the first of another hearing, it's just the first confirmation hearing. So there will be more to come.
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Mission accomplished. They are in no rush to lower interest rates. They want to see more progress on inflation. They don't necessarily think that the string of reductions need to continue at the same pace that they were. Remember, the economy has shown, it's demonstrated, that it can support a much higher neutral rate.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
And remember that neutral rate is something that it's neither juicing the economy nor nor is it necessarily dampening it in any way. Officials have kind of constantly revised that rate upwards because they're like, wait a second, we can support interest rates at the current levels right now. So that so-called neutral rate is something that they're keeping a close eye on.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
And right now it looks like we're kind of at it.
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Did DeepSeek Steal From OpenAI? & The Fed Holds Interest Rates Steady
And among those members on the flight were some members of the U.S. figure skating community, as well as two former world champion Russian skaters. They were returning from a training camp that follows the U.S. figure skating championships in Wichita, Kansas. I also just want to stress how rare this is. This was the first major commercial aircraft in the United States in the last 16 years.
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The Super Bowl isn't until next week, but this is my Super Bowl. It's Neal's Numbers coming up next.
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At Tasty Trade, you can explore the opportunities to make smarter moves. Trade however and whenever on your desktop, mobile app, or web platforms. It's your call.
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With pricing designed for serious traders, it's no surprise their platform was named Investopedia's Best Overall for Options Trading in 2024.
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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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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
All right, Neil, trivia time. How many professionals are on LinkedIn? Price is right rules. Nope.
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Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone. If that sounds like the kind of simplicity you want in a credit card, apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Brands. Terms and more at applecard.com.
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Then how is the unstoppable force Nvidia contending with the immovable object of a U.S. trade war? It's Thursday, May 29th. Let's ride.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Multiply that by three and you'd be close. LinkedIn has 1 billion members. And among that group, there are 130 million decision makers and 10 million C-level executives.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Yeah, you do have to be thrilled, but also it is trying to help put money towards funding these massive repair projects that the MTA is undergoing. They've budgeted $68 billion towards this, specifically $12 billion towards subway repairs and station improvements. Most of those are going towards adding elevators for accessibility and to become ADA compliant.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
So yes, $200 million is great to start, but also people have been looking at the budget and saying, wait, we're averaging $110 million to add one elevator to one station. So that's two elevators, if you're reading a little bit obliquely and a little bit higher level here.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
So they still have a lot of money, but this is crucial towards allowing them to continue to sell these bonds to help fund these improvement projects. So it is a very good start for a program that was very controversial when it went into place.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Absolutely. I would do my job a lot worse if Timothee Chalamet was dressed up as Guy Fieri yelling in my face. Do I think I would podcast better if I knew Ben Stiller was going to tweet more about my show than his own show, Severance? No, I do not think I would do my job better. So, It is just the bright lights in the Big Apple.
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With LinkedIn, you can target the professionals who matter most to your business to start generating results. In the tech space, LinkedIn generated two to five times higher return on ad spend than any other social media platform, and 79% of B2B content marketers said LinkedIn produces the best results for paid media.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
It's part of why maybe players either can play for the Knicks or they can't play for the Knicks. Like Julius Randle said, wasn't cut out for it necessarily. He went to Minnesota. Maybe he's doing a little bit better there. So, yeah, I do think there is something to it because people look at the front rows. I mean, it's front row. You see them face-to-face. You're very close to them.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
So this is just speculation, but you look at the record, and it is playing out in the numbers that you've given us so far.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
I don't know, but I'm a little nervous. My birthday's in February, so I got some time before, you know, death is knocking at my door. But why is there a birthday effect at all? There's a lot of explanations. My favorite is actually clerical. It is possible when processing death certificates to confuse the birth and death date, which would... explain the apparent increase.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Also, when the exact date of death is not known, oftentimes they just put the first or the 15th of the month as placeholder. So maybe there's an excess of births and deaths recorded on those dates that specifically overlap. Another one is the psychological idea of death postponement, where people have these looming birthdays and they hold on to reach death until they've had their special day.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
That has been mostly disproved by these studies though, because you would probably see slight spikes in the birthday effect in the days preceding, in the days after your birthday, but we don't see those in any of the studies. Another theory is just celebratory behavior. What do you normally do on your birthday? Maybe you go out, have a few drinks.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Obviously, alcohol is lead to increased rates of mortality. So it could just be as simple as people party too hard. But fascinating to see the statistical analysis has proven to be pretty robust across multiple experiments in multiple countries and states. So birthday effect. I'm nervous. Neil, is your birthday coming up?
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Trump's tariff agenda took a hit yesterday after a federal court ruled that the president actually does not have the legal authority. to impose sweeping unilateral global tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Trump has been using the 1997 law called the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to carry out most of his trade war, but the little-known US Court of International Trade issued two rulings yesterday that throws out all the tariffs imposed under that act
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
After two groups of plaintiffs sued on grounds that his orders violated the constitutional authority granted to Congress to control import duties. Other tariffs under a different legal authority called Section 232 that includes imports of auto steel and aluminum were unaffected by this ruling.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Neil, the administration has filed a notice of appeal, but as of right now, this plunges ports into chaos because new goods are arriving every day and now no one really knows what to enforce or what to charge.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Hailey Bieber may not be able to hit a high note like her husband, but she sure knows how to make a whole lot of money. Elf Beauty announced it will acquire her skincare brand, RODE, in a deal worth up to $1 billion just three years after it launched. 22 rode Haley Bieber's star power to become the number one skincare brand on social media in terms of earned media.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
It has also more than doubled its customer base over the past year, bringing in $212 million in revenue over the last 12 months. For e.l.f., the Rode acquisition is a chance to expand into higher-end skincare. Its average price point is about $6.50, while Rode's is in the high $20, according to e.l.f. 's CEO.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Neil, someone send this story to hair and makeup, because I think we need some Rode in our lives.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
NVIDIA reported earnings yesterday, and while the days of 200% revenue growth are over, things are still pretty hunky-dory for the company selling shovels during the AI gold rush. Demand for AI infrastructure shows no signs of cooling down, empowering NVIDIA to better than expected earnings and revenue. as its data center business recorded year-over-year growth of 73%.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
No, she really is. And also just the social media takeover that Rode has experienced over the past years is impossible to ignore. I mean, I'm sure you know a girl who has a Rode phone case too, which has this designated slot for their lip gloss to go in. So she just has a really good sense of what drives culture, what drives attention. She's got a big social media following herself.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
She's also married to someone who has a big social media following in Justin Bieber. We thought Kylie ran this playbook with Kylie Cosmetics. She sold her Kylie Cosmetics for $1.2 billion, but Ro did it essentially at the same price and much, much quicker than Kylie did. Just a juggernaut of a company.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Yeah, the provision is what's getting all the headlines here. I mean, Apple has this kind of hidden but not so hidden provision that won't let their phones be used by villains in movies. So Texas is trying to apply a similar sort of creative control. Who knows if it's going to work because what filmmaker wants to make something where you can't curse in it or portray Texas in any negative light?
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
So there were a lot of jokes being tossed around about how you need to have a plug for Texas in every way. It's like product placement for a whole state. But yeah, they're going after the film industry. It obviously aligns with the Trump administration's priorities to try to bring back domestic filmmaking as well. And I mean, Texas has had a lot of success already.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
in other attracting other industries with a low tax environment so potentially there is a path for them to becoming the hollywood in in this do you call texas the south i guess texas is kind of its own thing i would say it's the south but new mexico it's got a lot of uh challenges next to new mexico because you know that is a film and tv juggernaut as we know from breaking bad
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Not quite triple digits, but hey, C's get degrees. The other main focus ahead of its earnings was whether recent U.S. chip export controls were going to affect NVIDIA's international chip business in future revenue guidance, and the answer was yes. Yes, they are.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Nvidia forecasted $45 billion in sales for Q2, saying its guidance would have been $8 billion higher if not for the export restrictions on China-bound H20 chips. The restrictions also led to $4.5 billion in extra inventory charges, $2.5 billion in lost sales, and a 10-point hit to its gross margin.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Obviously, export restrictions are a hot topic in the chip industry, as successive administrations have tried to stop NVIDIA's most advanced tech from falling into Chinese hands. But Jensen Huang himself called those attempts a failure, arguing they've only accelerated China's domestic industry by galvanizing local talent and government support.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Neil, despite all this political tension, Nvidia is still chugging along, saying that global demand for their products is alive and well. But actually, Neil, I don't really care what you have to say here because we have our Morning Brew coworker, Phil, who runs the Maconomics YouTube channel in the studio this morning to chime in on Nvidia. Phil, first of all, thanks for being here this morning.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
And secondly, give me your thoughts on how Nvidia is navigating this China situation.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
I just bought the wrong Uncrustables for my girlfriend. And she said, no, no, no, we don't want these old 820 Uncrustables. I want these ones. And she started making her own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. So I've been there where you just overload on the wrong inventory.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
And it does look like investors, though, are kind of shrugging this off because looking at early morning trading right now, Nvidia's up 6% already. And then since the announcement of kind of these export controls, Nvidia's stock has actually risen 20%. So mainly just been this shrug off maneuver from a lot of global investors.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
But Phil, you also read through the most recent earnings transcript and found another interesting tidbit about demand for tokens, which is the industry speak for data being processed by AI models. What did you notice there?
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Yeah, it does signal like the demand is healthy, if that's kind of like the underlying point to the point you were making there. Because if you look at the list of domestic companies and their spend for this AI infrastructure, it is quite healthy. Big Tech still says that they plan to spend $345 billion on AI infrastructure this year. So homegrown demand is healthy as an OSC. Also, you look at
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
at the recent trip over to the Middle East that Trump just took. And it looks like there's a new Stargate project as there. So there's some international demand. So a lot of what we heard yesterday from Jensen Huang was kind of flexing on people saying like, hey, we are shut out of this $50 billion Chinese market.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
But look at the amount of demand we have from other places around the world and just here in the US. So I think a lot of companies are having these hiccups dealing with these export controls or dealing with the trade war. But NVIDIA probably has the biggest moat of any of them. So they have the most resilience to any of this.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
So it did look like yesterday Jensen Huang was basically saying like, hey, we are doing just fine. We're doing just hunky-dory here despite getting shut out of this pretty lucrative market. And on that note, it's time to move on. Phil, thanks so much for joining us. Where can our listeners find your stuff?
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Obviously could not be more in support of this rule. Nothing grinds my gears like people getting hot under the collar and jumping up to try to make up three rows. Where are you going? There is nowhere to go. It just drives me crazy. But you combine this with American Airlines' tech that triggers a sound if someone scans their boarding pass before their boarding group is called.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
It's not alone, but also McKinsey consultants getting fired for operational efficiency.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Into drive profitability. Where have I heard this before? But yeah, I mean, it is just insane. All the things that completely U-turned since the pandemic when they thought that this was just going to be the new normal, that governments were going to just need their services more and more. And talking about government consulting a little bit, Booz Allen Hamilton, who is a massive, you know...
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
provider of government consulting, is also cutting roughly 2,500 jobs after they said that they are feeling the effects of Trump administration's crackdown on federal contracting. Its stock price fell nearly 17% after the announcement because they are so exposed to 98% of their $12 billion in revenue comes from government-related work. So the hits just keep coming for a lot of consulting firms.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
It is interesting, though, to see McKinsey, who is the creme de la creme. They usually have a pretty good sense of what demand will be like and how much workforce they need to satisfy that demand. So to hear them cutting jobs, that is something that you don't normally see.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Yeah, they're trying to frame it that it's going to augment work, not replace consultants, which I know is probably true at some point. But yeah, that's definitely something that junior consultants are looking at saying, wait a second, this can maybe do my job better than I can. Senior consultants are probably still safe because they have to go out and win a business.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
And we are finally getting to the point where we are bringing back shame in proper amounts in the airport, in the travel sector. And I love it. Bring shame back. It's a very potent and powerful societal force. So shame the people who get up too early. Shame the early boarders. Shame and financial repercussions. And financial, but mostly the shame. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
But yeah, that's just another thing to add to the list of all these headwinds facing McKinsey and others. GameStop did a very GameStop thing yesterday and bought 4,710 Bitcoins worth more than half a billion dollars. It was the company's first investment in Bitcoin and comes as the digital currency has been on an absolute tear this year, flirting with an all-time high last week.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
While GameStop made the purchase partly because it's GameStop and it's allowed to do stuff for the memes, buying Bitcoin has become a popular strategy for an increasing number of public companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Obviously, Uber Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor, the CEO of the company's strategy, is the pioneer of this concept, turning his company, once a lowly business intelligence platform, into a leveraged bet on crypto fueled by selling stock and bonds in exchange for more Bitcoin.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Others have followed in his footsteps, namely Trump's family-run media company, which said this week that it plans to raise $2.5 billion to buy cryptocurrencies as well. In total, the number of listed companies holding Bitcoin surged from 89 to 114 since April and have amassed a hoard of around 800,000 worth $88 billion. So Neil, this is a thing now.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Companies holding a boatload of Bitcoin because Bitcoin is scarce and it tends to go up. And as it's gone up, more companies have been getting in on the game.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
To be clear, though, this is not a natural fit for a lot of public companies because most businesses are in the business of selling whatever product they sell. Why would you go and just do this other side quest of putting Bitcoin on your balance sheet?
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
But Matt Levine from Bloomberg actually talked about how it's actually a strategy that crypto investment funds have been pursuing, which is they go and acquire a U.S. public company and essentially just turn them into a pool of Bitcoin. He talked about one company, Upexie Inc., tiny public company, got acquired by a crypto investment firm and turned into this pot of Solana.
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Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Immediately it started selling on a public exchange, 4X the value of the actual Solana it so it is like this interesting arbitrage opportunity where for some reason the public markets are valuing these companies at a premium to the actual underlying assets that they're holding. Not necessarily something that is financially sound, but you are seeing a lot more companies doing it.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
And GameStop said that, hey, the reason we're doing it is because we see macro uncertainty and that this is a hedge against a financial system. So they are justifying it by kind of just talking about what the bull case of Bitcoin actually is. But mostly they're just trying to follow this strategy and trying to trade out a multiple to their underlying Bitcoin assets.
Morning Brew Daily
Why Companies Are Buying Bitcoin & Consulting Crashing Out?
Up next, that was a lot of numbers, but Neil, Scott, even more coming your way.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I was just curious because you've ate some food, maybe some drinks, a lot of tightness in the hamstrings. You've got to think that injuries go up on Thanksgiving thanks to these amateur backyard football games, and lo and behold, they do. ER visits in New York see a 10% to 12% uptick during this holiday period, with visits growing more frequent the longer the day goes on.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
As more of those drinks start to flow. So if you do want to play football today, make sure you limber up so you don't have any of those ER visits.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
That is the time to take the nap, people. We got two backup quarterbacks there. That is when you hit the couch and go to sleep. People might hate watch that game, though.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Yeah, the matchup of the green. I do actually want to talk about that other tradition that we touched on for a second right there, and that is nap time. The post-meal nap time when the Cowboys are losing just hits different. But also the reason why it hits different is not because Turkey can change tryptophan.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
And I know that know-it-all family member has definitely given you this spiel before, like, oh, you're tired because eating turkey boosts the level of tryptophan in your brain, which subsequently boosts the level of serotonin, which makes you feel nice and warm and happy and sleepy. But sorry to burst your bubble, turkey contains less tryptophan than normal chicken.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
So you're not getting some outsized dosage that are making your eyelids heavy. You're probably just sleepy because watching Daniel Jones or Tommy Cutlass play quarterback makes you want to close your eyes.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
My high school was, my graduating class was very, very small.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
My big thing too is, I mean, I played soccer in college and if you made the NCAA tournament, you would like miss Thanksgiving. So every year we would kind of say like, mom, I might not be coming home. I never ended up making the tournament though. So I always showed up for Thanksgiving.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Yeah, my Thanksgiving conversations will probably involve everyone going around bragging about how much Nvidia stock they have. But thanks to Yahoo Finance, I'll have something they don't. Insight into their full year EPS projections.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Yeah, just because we give something a name doesn't automatically mean. Oh, I thought so. I actually didn't know. Do you know why it's called Black Friday?
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
That is actually 100% correct right there. I just never put it together. Yeah, red denotes losses. Black means you're in the profit. That's why it's called.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
They're all make... Well, it's not necessarily that it is the actual day they go from red to black. It just means that you are probably going to end up in the... Like, you are... selling a lot of things, so you're going to be in the black. Put it in the accounting books as a day where you're in the black.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Another thing, a shift that we've talked about recently, I mean, it's not even recently anymore, but obviously most of Black Friday shopping has shifted from in-person to online, but not only to online, it has shifted mostly to mobile devices. 51.8% of all sales during the Cyber Monday week came from mobile devices last year. So it's not just that people are opening up your laptops anymore.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
It's much more just like take the phone out. This is where we do a lot of our shopping these days. So over half of all that activity on Cyber Monday's week does happen from your mobile device. So I don't know what that says. It just shows how easy it is to, you know, make these purchases that we're talking about on Black Fridays.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Finally, no Thanksgiving Day show would be complete without a little gratitude. Hope you all take some time to step back and reflect today on some of the best parts of life, family, health, and obviously some delicious side dishes. Neil and I wanted to use this moment to give our thanks to you all, our listeners. Without you all, Morning Brew Daily is just two guys talking to themselves in a room.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
But when you guys show up day after day, week after week, and now year after year, it turns the show into so much more.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
So if you'll let us get a little sappy for a moment, we can't thank you enough for tuning in each morning and forming this awesome Morning Brew Daily community that we have. So happy Thanksgiving from our family to yours. And speaking of the MBD family, Neil, let's roll these cards.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
So to start the show, I have a secret to admit to you all. My family is very much a turkey trot family. Shocking. Put the turkey in at the crack of dawn, then off we go to our local 5K race, ready to earn the meal that's coming later in the day. But how did Thanksgiving become such a popular day for millions of people across the world to lace up their running shoes?
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I mean, the cliche saying is like, we couldn't do it without you, but we quite literally couldn't do it without all the people whose names Neil is about to read.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Well, it all started back in Buffalo, New York in 1896, the same year that the modern Olympics actually made their debut. That first event put on by a local YMCA, attracted just four finishers, but things only grew from there.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Thanks to the rise of Nike and the popularity of iconic American runners like Steve Prefontaine, the numbers of turkey trot participants quadrupled in the 1970s, but they weren't the turkey trots you know and love today. Quote, it was all guys in short shorts with porn star mustaches. Rich Hardsborough, CEO of the nonprofit running USA, told The Hustle, ultra competitive, ultra male dominated.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
It wasn't until the 80s after pioneers like Joan Benoit Samuelson and Mary Decker.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
towed the line in major races did turkey trots reach a wider audience soon they turned into the family-friendly affair you know today and now thanksgiving is the most popular running day in america more than a million people will tow the start line today so shout out all my turkey trot people out there you are not alone
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Oh, absolutely. Are you kidding me? So our local race is called Run for the Pies, actually. And what you do, instead of getting medals, if you get top three in your age group or top three overall, you get a pie, like an apple pie or pumpkin pie. So I don't want to brag or anything, but I usually say, don't worry about dessert this year, Mom. Like, we'll get some pies at the morning turkey talk.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
If you don't do well, then we are without pies. But I actually do just want to dig into that Buffalo Turkey Trot that I mentioned. This race is pretty remarkable. They say that they are the oldest continually running public foot race in North America, established all the way back in 1896.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
It really hasn't missed a year since, even during World War I, even during the 1918 flu pandemic, even during World War II, and then as well as the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. They always line it up in Buffalo for this Turkey Trot, longest running public foot race in North America. Pretty cool.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Right. Because we recently did an episode on running, and I thought the Boston Marathon was definitely the oldest race in America. No, Buffalo's got it.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I read this endurance book and elite athletes go to Manchester. It is like a prize race. Also, that Dallas one that you mentioned set the world record for the most amount of people dressed as turkeys running. So not only is it one of the biggest, it is also the biggest gathering of people dressed as turkeys running as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Finally, though, my last point on turkey trots. I don't want to burst your bubble, but you would have to walk for about nine hours to burn off the typical Thanksgiving dinner. So I know I said you earn your meal with a turkey trot, but unfortunately, you're still going to be probably in a calorie surplus. It's called Thanksgiving.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Yeah, honestly, I wasn't a big Macy's Day parade watcher, but I was a little curious. What if Morning Brew Daily wanted to get a balloon this year? How much would it set us back? It costs a pretty penny. A first-time balloon costs upwards of $200,000. That's just to cover the parade admission and the balloon construction. But here's an even crazier fact. Balloons...
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Today, happy Thanksgiving, everyone. To celebrate, we're serving up a Thanksgiving-themed episode talking everything from turkey legs to turkey trots. It's Thursday, November 28th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
take at least $510,000 to fill up with helium. That is the cost of the helium because these things are huge. They use upwards of 300,000 to 700,000 cubic feet of helium. So that is just a massive bill.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
So unfortunately, you're not going to be seeing Neil or Toby's heads float down this year, but maybe a few more ad deals, maybe a few more listens, we'll get enough cash to put together an MBD balloon.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I'm wondering, though, because it's like 300,000 to 700,000 cubic feet per balloon, and there's however many balloons on there. It certainly could be. I mean, there's always some truth to urban legends. But I was looking also into just call it the Mount Rushmore of parade balloons. Who has been out there the most? Who has made the most appearances? And Snoopy is the GOAT, obviously.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
43 parades to its name. Lots of different variations of Snoopy. Sometimes you got Space Snoopy. Sometimes you just have the classic. Ronald McDonald comes in second with 31 parades. Then you got characters like Rocky and Bull Weakle, then Pikachu.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
It also got me thinking, in modern media, are there any characters that you think will have the same lasting power like that of Snoopy was that in 50 years, 100 years? Mickey Mouse. Well, see, I'm thinking more. No, I know what I'm saying.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I, it absolutely has been preserved because both my mom and my dad make these sweet quote unquote salads. My dad always makes this seven layer jello salad. I was like, why are you calling this a salad at all? It is in like a Bundt cake mold with ice cream layers, marshmallows, raspberries in it. And it is,
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Maybe there's a turkey trot involved, some cooking and eating, obviously, a little bit of football and a nap, then finish it all off with some pre-Black Friday shopping.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
obviously a dessert but like he labels it a salad and then my mom makes Waldorf salad too which does have apples and it actually has mayonnaise mixed in as well doesn't sound good but it's sweet and delicious so I do love this is the most American of things ever is that we rebranded these just like sugary basically monstrosities as salads and they have persisted all the Modern day.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Have you ever had one of these?
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I mean, it just sounds gross, but I know it's probably delicious. But eggs and whipped cream in the same sentence.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Oh, I got a lot of thoughts on this. For me, stuffing and mashed potatoes are 1A, 1B. They can both shine in their own right, but they're also kind of perfect cover-ups for – Kind of the overall weakness of turkey if we're in the trust tree here. Ladder them on, turkey becomes a little more palatable. And then for me, next is gravy because it's the glue that holds the whole plate together.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Also slide cranberry sauce in on that same tier as well because it sort of elevates the team around it. It's not the star player, but it elevates everyone around it. I think I'm legally obligated to say green bean casserole as well because my poor brother has been making that Campbell's soup recipe since he was like 10 years old, since he could reach the kitchen counter.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
And we all would go like, ooh, Henry, so good. We love it. But it is actually pretty dang good. And then finishing it off, I'm putting sweet potato casserole on my list because the sugar content per square inch of that dish is outrageous. The way we make it is the entire top is covered in marshmallows that you kind of put under the broiler, get a little caramely. So good.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I don't know how that slides in as a side dish and not an actual dessert. But yeah, that's kind of generally how I'm approaching the side dish game this year.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
I have stats actually to back up those vibes that you were talking about. U.S. per capita turkey consumption peaked all the way back in 1996. It's been a slow decline since then. It's down 18%. Now we only consume about 14.8 pounds of turkey per year. That was in 2023. The majority of that coming on Thanksgiving.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Think of it as some small talk fodder to bring up in case that one cousin starts shilling a meme coin a little too hard over dessert. But before we dive in, a quick word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, how are you feeling for the big family conversation around the Thanksgiving table later today?
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Obviously, I also put together some ideas if you did want to go in a different direction than turkey this year. Roast chicken, toss on some maple butter, some rosemary, pretty delicious. Pork chops and apples, I think that's, first of all, just an insane combination right there, but much better than turkey. A beef wellington if you wanted to get a little fancy.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Someone brought a brisket as a good option, and all of a sudden I can't stop thinking about.
Morning Brew Daily
Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, free yourself up from the shackles of turkey today. The world is your oyster. I mean, have some oysters if you're into that. But yeah, I'm still team turkey, though, until I die. Now let's take a quick break to digest some of this food. Okay, hope that food is sitting well. But now it's time to retire to the couch for some football.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Football is as much a part of Thanksgiving in America as turkey or awkward family conversations. Much like the turkey trots we talked about earlier, you can trace football's presence on Thanksgiving Day all the way back to the 1800s. Princeton and Yale kicked off the tradition, scheduling a game against each other on Thanksgiving Day from 1876 to 1881.
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
Due to its popularity, the schools actually decided to move the college championship game to Thanksgiving Day in New York City going forward. The NFL didn't follow suit until later in 1934 when the new Lions owner scheduled a Thanksgiving Day game to attract fans after the team relocated to the city that year. Since that decision, football on Thanksgiving has turned into a national pastime
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Thanksgiving Trends, Turkey Trots, Traditions and More
in an absolute ratings juggernaut. In 2022, 42 million viewers watched the Dallas Cowboys play the New York Giants, becoming the most watched NFL game in regular season history. But even outside the professional side of things, Thanksgiving Day Turkey Bowls have also taken place in backyards across the country.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
So I'm still rocking the Apple Watch.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
No, no, no, no. It's Kyla Scanlon, I think. It's our interview with Kyla. Because we talked about de-dollarization with her, and it seemed a little bit more insightful than what we came up with.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
That was probably one of our favorite interviews of the year because Kyla's an economist, but she also can speak very colloquially about these things. So she can say things like de-dollarization gets on my last nerve because she thinks about that stuff. And it has been a little bit more of a talking point in recent months.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I mean, as we're recording this, some of the BRICS nations have floated the idea of decoupling their economies from the dollar. So- Kyla just needs to go in front of, you know, these, these nations and say, it doesn't make sense to de-dollarize. But yeah, that one was, if you haven't listened to that interview, I highly recommend going back because that was one of our best of the year.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I think this was a Toby's trends of like plumbers and electricians being just more and more in demand because they have these hard skills. And it was like part of the disillusionment with going to college, because why would you go to a four year institution, get all this debt when you could go into a trade and immediately start making money? It's like a two year institution. So but.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I'm going to do the rule we just thought about. If I introduce it, it usually means it's Neil because he responded to the story.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Yeah, you absolutely nailed the Brad Summer. That is funny, though, because you do listen to Charlie XCX. You did go through kind of the song in the summer eras.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I mean, this was about tax advice spreading on TikTok where people were saying you could like write off your little small white puppy as a guard dog and just saying a lot of interesting things on TikTok.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I like not so sound. Yeah. Yeah, Neil is all about brevity. What an evergreen quote that is, though, because TikTok does constantly spread not-so-sound financial advice. You could have said that on any episode during the year. By the way, actually, when I do not-so-sound, it's because in my head, I want to say a much... harsher word and I have to dial it back.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
And so what comes out is this hedged word of not so sound. Just say what you mean.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Right. I know it is, but I remember thinking like, I'm about to say like a curse word on air. Let's dial it back. Not so sound comes out. So that is why, you know, sometimes those, those phrases emerge.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
He wanted to say something else.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I know what it's in relation to. Do you know what it's in relation to? No, but first, say who said it. Well, I think— Again, I introduced this story because I think it's about Walgreens unveiled this peelable mango candy that kind of set the internet on fire. And we started saying that a lot more innovation is happening in candy versus chocolate.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
You can see sales rising in candy, falling in chocolate. So I think it's in relation to the Walgreens mango story.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
All you got to do is scroll through TikTok. That's what you see. All these candy brands are just so big on there right now. Also, cocoa prices are at an all-time high. So maybe it's just by you have to innovate on the gummy side of things because chocolate is just so expensive.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
It's not either of you. Okay. That makes our hardwired for narrative. Yeah. It sounded way too smart for us. Who else did we talk to?
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
That was a very insightful episode because he does – anyone who's seen the 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest, he does these world-famous introductions where he literally – Wax is poetic about each one of these competitive eaters, and he takes it very seriously. He understands human nature very deeply. So even though it seems like this kitschy 4th of July show, he thinks about it a lot.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
That also was one of our favorites. You personally were very excited for that one. It's such a cool interview and such a cool story.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
You all seem like the experts. I hope so. I know. If he doesn't go back, it will slowly lose its relevance. I feel bad for our boy, George Shea, because he signed, he had this marketing agreement that went south with, or not went south, but just like was a conflict of interest with Impossible Foods and Nathan's. And so he ended up doing like a Netflix show with Kobayashi instead.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
So he's got to come back though.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I think it's Neil as well because I would have used strategically, not strategic.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I don't actually know what it is.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
That's really good. And he was arrested in France.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
He was, yeah, because Telegram is like this sleeping giant in the social media world. It crossed a billion users. It's very popular in, I mean, certain communities like Ukraine, Russia, Ukraine. But, yeah, Pavel Durov has, like, a ton of kids. He's very into, you know, like, the longevity biohacking movement. He is just an incredible figure and probably will get a movie.
Morning Brew Daily
The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Are we saying Neil said it, though? I think Neil said it. Neil did say it. I mean, of course.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
It really is crazy. We are professional talkers. All we do is spit out quotes like this, some of them better than others. So thank you, Kyle, for helping host us. Thank you, Ray, for picking out quotes that make us look relatively good.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Great show today, Kyle. Let's run it back again next year.
Morning Brew Daily
The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Wait, so these layoffs have a tinge of AI?
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I know, I don't, but also it was correct, though. They did relinquish the rights, even though they are fighting for them still. No, they settled that. It's gone. So it is correct, which means I must have said it.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Although inside the NBA, they did come to an agreement, so those boys will still be on your TV screens, which is what we all wanted.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Yeah, this is either two things. Well, we did a lot of stories this year about countries kind of cracking down on tourism. One was like Milan started these rules of like quiet hours after a certain time. There was also...
Morning Brew Daily
The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
There's one wild card, though. Remember, Amsterdam put out a call banning British men from specifically visiting the city. So there was a lot of stories.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Was it a New Year's resolution?
Morning Brew Daily
The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I think it's Neil and NVIDIA, right?
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
It was fun. The numbers were gaudy. We were really mad that we didn't come up with the idea of hosting a watch party either. It was a little bit of a nerdy event for sure. The people who, before the workday is over, goes to a bar in Manhattan just to watch NVIDIA's earnings drops. It was a fun time.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
But yeah, unless they somehow double revenue again, which seems unlikely, it probably won't be as big of an event. But still, you know.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Neil has wanted to do like college game day-esque for like the jobs report or something like that. If you have it, I just got to be on the panel.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Oh, yeah. And it was also they cited, too, that it was so hot that it was bad for the ice cream business. There is like an ideal temperature in the summers. If it gets too hot, people don't want to eat ice cream because it just melts there. So that was the first time I ever considered the fact that it could be too hot for ice cream.
Morning Brew Daily
The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
That's a bougie answer for sure. Delicious as well. I grew up on Edie's, which not a lot of people did. My uncle used to work for them. It's E-D-Y apostrophe S. Oh,
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Yeah, and it is underrated, I will say. I just never meet anyone who actually eats it, but since I had the familial tie, I was in Edie's family.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
The first part, I thought it was going to be in reference to Chick-fil-A launching a streaming service. But then I think it is like a Netflix thing bidding on live sports. They made a ton of, you know, inroads into that.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I'll take it, but I don't think it's in reference to those sporting events.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
And I guess we were railing against vending machines getting too, oh no, it's not Toby's Trends. It was the facial recognition technology at certain colleges that people were like freaking out about. Like why does our vending machine need facial recognition? And it still was me though.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Two vending machine stories this past year, though.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Okay, well, let's try to think of the context, though. Yep.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Okay. I feel better about it now.
Morning Brew Daily
The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Bring a megaphone, especially if you're a podcaster. I have no idea.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Wait, when was it? It was in April? Yep. Was it my sister's wedding? Because I hosted field day at my sister's wedding.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I literally couldn't talk like the day before the podcast, but you know, that was my Jordan flu game.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
Well, first of all, music is a wonderful medium.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
And second of all, sometimes I do. I feel the voice straining. It's like you go and socialize too hard and you got to, you know, this is the way I make money.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I remember this story, too. It was just about a report that it was this huge blind spot in terms of, like, creating credit reports is that buy now, pay later didn't contribute or hurt your credit score. So it was just like this lurking beast of a thing. That's right. Some are calling it phantom debt. Phantom debt. There it was. So who broke down phantom debt? I think it was me.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I think I introduced that story. So I'm going to say. Let's go with Toby. It was Neil. Dang it.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I think what happens is one of us introduces the story, so they think that's who said it, but it's probably the person who replied to the story that we got it. So we have to invert our thinking here.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
It was pretty fun to see him in a podcast setting because he is the exact same as how he is on the show. He also has his phrases. He loves saying, take it behind the barn. Yeah, I don't want to see the behind his barn. He has said that to entrepreneurs face-to-face, and so it's part of his lexicon, and he busted it out in our interview as well.
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The Year of MBD Quotes, Who Said It? Neal or Toby?
I mean, I have looked. I have paralysis by analysis because Mr. Wonderful is also a big watch collector. No surprise there. I wore my Apple Watch in, and he was just going in on the fact that Apple Watches have no soul. You need to get into more collecting of these art pieces. And he gave me a few names, but then I looked up the price tag, and I got a little nervous.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Good morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, Yale is doing something even more unthinkable than when they rejected me.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Each episode brings AWS and product leaders together in a roundtable discussion to chat through what you need to know to get to market faster and continuously optimize your product.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have your brain purring like a V10 engine on a Porsche Carrera GT. My first number is $1 trillion, which is how much wealth was created for the 19 richest American households last year. Yes, just 19 households.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Think Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Gates, and Buffett increased their wealth by $1 trillion in a single year. That is more than the value of Switzerland's entire economy, according to the Wall Street Journal. And if you stacked $1 trillion in dollar bills on top of each other, it would reach more than a quarter of the way to the moon.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
It means that the super billionaire class now controls a record share of the United States' total wealth. Back in 1982, the .0001%, the richest of the rich in America, accounted for .1% of America's total wealth. That was 11 households back then. Now, the 19 richest households control 1.8% of America's total wealth, following the biggest one-year increase on record last year.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Toby, thanks to the U.S. economy's growth over the past few decades, every group has seen their net worth go up. But even as the overall pie has expanded, the top, top echelon accounts for a bigger slice.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
For my next number, meat is having a renaissance. Sales of poultry, beef, pork, lamb, and other meat in the United States reached a record $105 billion last year, according to the New York Times. Americans ate nearly 7% more meat last year than before the pandemic, while the number of people who said they're trying to eat less meat dropped to the lowest level in at least five years, just 22%.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
If you're surprised by this, I know, me too. It was only a few years ago that Americans were foul on foul. They wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot skewer. The reasons were numerous. Meat was seen as unhealthy, bad for the climate, and cruel to the animals. And into the meatless void came a plant-based rush.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Burger King introduced the Impossible Whopper, Top Restaurant, Eleven Madison Park went vegan, and the recipe site Epicurious banned beef from all its future content. But if meat was so over back then, it is so back right now. Just look at Texas Roadhouse, which grew sales 15% last year and overtook Olive Garden as the country's top casual dining chain.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And what's fascinating, Toby, is that meat is being embraced by people on both the right and the left. There's this bipartisan or nonpartisan movement to put meat back on the culinary map. What is going on here?
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
I mean, recently it's been Rory McIlroy every shot final round at the Masters. I've been watching that one on repeat.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
For my final number, a movie about cardinals gathering in secret to elect a new pope is booming in popularity as cardinals gather in secret to elect a new pope. Streaming viewership for Conclave, last year's Oscar-winning drama depicting a fictionalized vote on the next pope, has jumped 283% after Pope Francis' death.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
On April 20th, right before the Pope died, people watched 1.8 million minutes of Conclave. On Monday, that increased to 6.9 million minutes watched. Those numbers could get much bigger because on Tuesday, the movie became available to stream for Amazon Prime members before you had to rent or buy it.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
So it's clear that people are turning to Conclave to learn more about this mysterious process by which cardinals seal themselves off from the world to elect a new leader. But is the fictional account accurate? Experts say, honestly, yeah, for the most part.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Sure, some of it is a little overdramatic, but according to Catholic historian Kathleen Sprouse Cummings, the film did a great job of portraying the types of conversations that happened before a Conclave and nailed a lot of the details. Toby, talk about making a timely movie.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
As a recent phone upgrader, I am well aware of that feeling. You think you're living a perfectly acceptable phone life, then bang, everything gets faster, smoother, better looking, and you realize what you were missing.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
What do you think Microsoft is thinking right now? Because they've invested $13 billion into OpenAI. They have a tight partnership. And they also have a browser and a search engine. And here you have OpenAI saying, actually, we're not so satisfied with what Microsoft has produced. We really want the Google one.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And we don't even know if Google is going to be forced to sell Chrome. We'll know by August. American mothers could get a $5,000 check for having a baby under a proposal pitched to the White House to encourage people to marry and have more children. The concept of a lucrative 5K baby bonus...
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
is just one of many schemes currently under consideration as part of the government's efforts to stave off a depopulation crisis here in the United States. A number of countries that are shrinking, like Japan and South Korea, have launched financial incentives to spur more baby-making, but we haven't seen those types of measures yet in America. Trump and Vice President J.D.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Vance, in particular, have adopted a pro-natalist approach that advocates for more families, and they've been fielding a bunch of plans from anyone who has any ideas. Another idea, separate from the baby bonus, is to award a National Medal of Motherhood to mothers with six or more children.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
It's rich, creamy, velvety, like your taste buds are finally looking at a 4K screen.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Maybe we should adopt that one.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Plus, it's dairy-free, peanut-free, soy-free, and gluten-free. So if your mornings could use a little upgrade. Give Planet Oat a try.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
I got to say, I love sports. The NFL draft is just pretty much low on the list of things that I care about, especially when your team wins the Super Bowl last year, and so you're picking last. But I trust Howie Roseman to rebuild our roster a little bit. But we'll see what happens. Yeah, I mean, the quarterback trend, both trends are very interesting.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
The fact that there hasn't been a trade, a single trade since, on the first round before the draft kicks off, which is remarkable. And then QBs just shows how, you know, shows how this league has become passing first from 1991 to 1997. There was only one quarterback that was selected number one overall. And you can pause this podcast if you're a sports trivia buff and want to guess.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
But the answer is Drew Bledsoe. And so, yeah, this is a transition that has taken place over a couple of decades here in the NFL, where just the quarterback is valued above every single other position. All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. Toby, safe travels to London and run fast.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
For any questions, comments, or feedback, send a message to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Uchenwa Ogu is our technical director. Scoops Dardaris is on audio. Hair and makeup bit my finger.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Devin Emery is our president, and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Grabbing a quick meal is easy. It's getting a quick meal that's also good for you that's tricky.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Luckily, Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that simplify eating well. They're never frozen, dietician-approved, and ready to heat and eat in two minutes.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
But the best arrives at dinnertime when my brain is shut down and all I want to do is take down my number one favorite spicy Creole chicken thighs.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Eat smart with Factor. Get started at factormeals.com slash factor podcast and use code factor podcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping.
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Good Thursday morning. We missed a big birthday yesterday. YouTube turned 20 years old. Time sure does fly when you go down the Denver airport conspiracy rabbit hole. On April 23, 2005, the first video was uploaded to YouTube, grainy 19-second footage of a visit to the elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, the trade war is going to the stock market. And they're like, why are you so obsessed with me? Because the market is hanging on every single word coming out of the White House from either President Trump or Treasury Secretary Scott Besant. It's surged. more than 2% after Trump said we would probably see a come down in the tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
But then it went a little bit down after Besant said, well, this wouldn't be unilateral. We need to actually get a deal with China. And they're down again this morning in futures trading. S&P 500 is down about 0.5% because China just came out and said, well, we haven't heard from the White House. No one's called us. And here's the thing about negotiating with China. They do not call you first.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
There's only one time in recent memory when a Chinese leader initiated contact with an American leader. And that was after September 11th, 2001, when they sent a telegram of condolence to George W. Bush. But still, George Bush still had to make the first call. So if the Americans are intent on negotiating with China, they cannot rely on Xi Jinping to make the call because they just don't do that.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah, you're hearing from pretty much everyone in the freight industry trying to shout from the rooftops. Like you guys don't know what's going on here, especially in Southern California, where 500,000 people work in logistics and where, you know, most trade from China comes through the ports. We do $600 billion worth of trade with China. Most of that, 95% of that
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
comes via ocean shipping to the port of Long Beach and Los Angeles so Craig Fuller who founded the trade publication Freight Waves warned of about the trucking industry where you know these ships come in with their containers and then to get to their warehouses in you know inland California they have to be trucked in he said that year-over-year trucking activity out of Los Angeles is down
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
It will likely drop to 50 percent in the coming weeks if there isn't a trade war resolution. He said massive layoffs are coming to the West Coast trucking sector where logistics is the second largest employment sector in the entire region. So you have Ryan Peterson of Flexport, who is one of the biggest logistics firms out there.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
This guy, you know, inside in the trucking industry, warning of a major slowdown, major layoffs, businesses getting hurt unless there isn't a come down in tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
so it seems like president trump is you know he did talk to walmart target uh and home depot ceo warning of empty shelves mass layoffs so we'll see what happens i mean china said that there's no negotiations going on but markets are very much you know hanging on every word of this because of the huge economic impact it has
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
the 20 years since has seen a lot of videos and a lot of growth from lonely island to the evolution of dance to coney 2012 to gangnam style to mr beast now youtube is estimated to be worth about 550 billion dollars as a standalone business more than netflix toby i know it's hard to choose but i have to ask what's your favorite youtube video ever
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
The nation's top universities are stockpiling cash at levels not seen since COVID or the great financial crisis to prepare for a financial standoff with the federal government. The Trump administration has so far pulled, suspended, or put under review more than $10 billion in funding to schools. It says don't do enough to combat antisemitism.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
The colleges dispute those claims, but they're still breaking into the piggy bank to weather the upcoming storm. Harvard raised $750 million in a bond deal, Northwestern, $500 million, and Princeton University, $320 million. But Yale is going even further.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
The Bulldogs are reportedly aiming to sell up to $6 billion of their private equity holdings, equivalent to nearly 15% of its gargantuan $41 billion endowment.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
That Yale would consider shaving off private equity holdings is raising a whole lot of eyebrows because a few decades ago, Yale pioneered an endowment strategy, literally called the Yale Endowment Model, that emphasized illiquid investments like private equity over the traditional mix of stocks and bonds.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
This approach changed institutional investing forever, and some argue that Yale's retreat from private equity may be a worrying signal for the sector more broadly. But however they're doing it, through bond sales or by selling private equity, it's clear that top colleges are building a financial fortress because economic winter may be coming.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Yeah. So David Swenson, a few decades ago, he was this guy that came in to lead the Yale endowment. He looked at what colleges were doing and he said, OK, you got 64 percent in stocks and 40 percent in bonds. These are very liquid investments, meaning you can sell them very quickly and convert them into cash. And he thinks he said. oh, why aren't we doing more illiquid investments?
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
Why aren't we doing venture capital? Why aren't we doing real estate? Why aren't we doing private equity? Those could probably generate better returns and we probably don't need this cash right away. So we changed up Yale's investment model. Pretty much every single college followed this path.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
And the fact that they're planning to sell $6 billion worth of private equity is certainly a warning signal to this sector. There's been a boom in private equity, certainly over the last decade. But in recent years, it's been very hard to find exits for companies.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
The way private equity works is you typically buy a company, you make it more efficient, you pump up the value, and then you sell it off after 10 years that you own it. The problem is in this market environment over the past few years, it's been very hard to sell that off. And maybe Yale is a canary in the coal mine for a broader reckoning in private equity.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
My first question when I saw this was, well, can she do it? Is that even possible? Well, there were scientists that did a study. They posted it in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science. They said, yes, she could do it under very specific conditions. She could run 359.37 with drafting provided by one pacer in front and one in back. And then you change out with two other pacers.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
At 800 meters, they said if these conditions are fulfilled, then she could possibly do it. And I'm sure Nike is really hoping she does. But maybe it doesn't even matter because they're in this for the publicity anyway and to promote themselves as the purveyors of a super shoe and athletics that they've kind of missed the boat on over the past few years.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
It doesn't matter because we're talking about, you know, elite runners and Nike in the same sentence. And that's all they want, because during the previous thing that they did with Ellie Kipchoge, they released the Vaporfly, which was their super shoe that changed running forever. So maybe they've got, you know, another super shoe in store that they're going to roll out with this particular model.
Morning Brew Daily
Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Tough Tariffs… Softening? & Nike's Sprint To Dominate Running Again
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Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Good job, everyone, for taking some time off. Also, it's justice for anyone who swears the security lines have been getting longer in that area. hotels you have to book further and further advanced. People really are traveling more.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
And if you zoom out to not just America, but the world level too, the UN's World Trade Organization released its 2024 year in review data and found that the tourism industry is 100% back. Actually, I should say it's 99% back because 99% of the number of people who traveled in 2019 traveled this year. So that adds up to about 1.4 billion people traveling internationally. And
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
And Europe was a very popular destination.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
That's crazy too because remember how anti-tourist Spain was or anti-tourist the headlines coming out of Spain were because remember residents of Barcelona were shooting water pistols at tourists saying that they didn't want them in their city anymore. And I don't blame them too because, I mean, they got 98 million visitors. Paris had the dang Olympics and only beat it by 2 million.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
So a lot of people are coming to these European countries.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
It was my junior year of high school. We did a stock picking competition over the year where we would manage a virtual portfolio on Yahoo Finance.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
That was my favorite part, is that this finance minister tried to explain it, tried to clarify, and then just uttered a sentence that absolutely provided no clarification whatsoever. Just basically listed out the different types of popcorn once more. But yes, this whole fight is emblematic of something that's been going on in India for a while now.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
They have been desperately trying to cut some red tape because it has this kind of reputation as being notoriously hard to do business in because of just how big it is and how many different regions and sectors have different tax rules. In 2017, they tried to pass this tax reform called the Goods and Services Tax that aimed to simplify their tax code.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
The backers wanted just two tax rates, just simplify everything. It ended up having over six, over a half a dozen, and didn't necessarily do what it promised to do. And I think it's all come to a head in this popcorn tax that is emblematic of so much else that is wrong with their tax system.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Well, don't spoil it. Anyway, I tried to go the biotech route and looked for a company about to get approval for a new drug. Long story short, the drug did not get approved and I got dead last.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
I'm definitely going, you can't eat too much of the sweet popcorn, though I do think that should be taxed the highest because that just has that luxury feel to it. So I'm going to just go with that normal salty movie theater popcorn.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Don't you love when you go to the club as a 12-year-old and eat some grub there? But Kidz Bop is this behemoth. It has just been something that had remarkable staying powder. It does feel like a very early 2000s thing to be invented, but the fact that they're still churning out albums today shows that there's clearly a gap in the market.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
That was something that was founded by two lawyers in 2001 that they identified. They were like, There's music for tiny babies. It's just usually not even lyrics involved. Rafi maybe was something you listened to. Rafi and lyrics? Yeah, that was... Rafi was... He produced bangers. But that's more for sub-five-year-olds. And then you have...
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Normal music, which maybe has some lyrics in there that you don't want your kids listening to. So there's this whole age group from like age four to age 12 that was missing music. And Kidz Bop slid in to fill that gap, which is why we're still talking about Kidz Bop 50 to this day. And the most famous alum of Kidz Bop, I have to say, which I didn't know, Zendaya.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
That is a great factoid to bust out. The New York Times did this whole piece on Kidz Bop, their 50th album. And in there, they put a picture of Zendaya in a kid's bop, and then a picture of her in Challengers. I was like, wow, you couldn't have picked any other movie there. So it is showing, though, that these alumni have gone on to spread their wings and do bigger and better things.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Now let's sprint to the finish with a couple more headlines you may have missed. Up first, if you were scrolling Instagram and came across a surprise picture of President Trump or J.D. Vance the other day, you weren't alone. Many Instagram and Facebook users reported confusion about as to how posts from POTUS were popping up in their feeds.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
No, Zuck wasn't hacking into your phone and making you follow the new president. It was just part of the regular process of turning over the White House social media accounts. The general policy that most social media platforms like X and Instagram have adopted is to hand over the POTUS VP and first lady handles to the new administration, but leave the follower counts untouched.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Exactly. The interface wasn't as polished in 2014 as it is now, but Yahoo has a long track record of arming the financially curious with the tools and knowledge you need to grow your investments, whether real or fake stock picking competition.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
So it is possible that four or eight years ago, you made the decision to click follow on POTUS, a decision present you may have forgotten leading to some of that confusion.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Finally, soup lovers, if you've ever been sipping on some delicious broth and thought to yourself, hmm, wish this was harder, then boy, does Progresso have the thing for you. The soup brand just unveiled Soup Drops, a cough-drop-shaped hard candy flavored like chicken noodle soup.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
If candy flavored like broth, savory veggies, soft egg noodles, and just a hint of parsley wasn't haunting enough to think about, just wait till you hear the tagline Progresso cooked up, Soup Drops, Soup you can suck on. Neil, somehow the first batch Progresso dropped, sold out in under an hour. Who are these little soup freaks?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Absolutely. I would not. Anything savory, anything soup flavor. That is not something I want in candy form. We were speaking, too, about what would be the worst flavor. I think we both came to the conclusion that anything cream-based would be pretty bad, so like a clam chowder, cream of mushroom. But did you come up with anything that you would want to actually try?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Oh, no. That's still just as savory. I don't want something too, you know, savory like that. There's too much bread, too much flavor in that.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Yesterday, we got some grade A gab from around the business world as everyone from Elon Musk to Jamie Dimon spoke their minds about Trump tariffs and TikTok. So for our top stories today, we're going to pick some of the more notable quotes dropped by a cast of business characters as a jumping off point to talk about some news. Up first.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
I want you to share the podcast with someone who could use their very own MBD sweatshirt. These things are comfy. Neil and I rock them all the time. So send it to your biggest MBD fan or send it to someone who's never listened to the podcast and say, hey, try a sweatshirt out too.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Trump's cadre of billionaires are already fighting Real Housewives-style. Elon Musk poured cold water on the Trump-backed Stargate initiative announced this week that aims to invest $500 billion into AI infrastructure. They don't actually have the money, he wrote in reply to an OpenAI post on the announcement. SoftBank has well under $10 billion secured. I have that on good authority.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Now, Musk is not exactly a neutral party here. He has long had beef with Sam Altman and OpenAI after its for-profit turn, with Musk later posting that Sam Altman is a swindler. But Neil, going out and publicly undermining a big announcement from Trump is one of the first public displays of friction between these two.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
It's something to watch. Elon doesn't have his hands in this particular pie, which is potentially why he is undermining the project in public. Or maybe they really don't have the money secured. We don't necessarily know at this point. But what we are seeing is what happens when you have a lot of billionaires in the henhouse. You're going to have these
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
clashes, these public hashes too, because Elon Musk owns X, which is where this exchange went down. One person, though, who is trying to remain above it all is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. He was asked by CNBC, what do you think about Elon posting this? What do you think about him saying that the funding is not there?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Then Elon Musk called BS on President Trump's first big tech investment, trouble brewing in the White House. It's Thursday, January 23rd. Let's ride. Let's ride. Well, it is still freezing out, not just in New York, but all over the country. Snow on Florida beaches, people ice skating down streets in New Orleans. Winter is here, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
And he told CNBC that I'm good for my $80 billion, which is not a sentence that a lot of people in the world can utter, but Satya Nadella can do that. So It does look like there is some friction. Even the fact that Saeed Nadella doesn't even know what's going on with this other funding stream shows that maybe Stargate isn't off to the best start.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
But he did say that $80 billion will be funneled into this project from Microsoft.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Right. The fear from a lot of economists have been that these duties, these tariffs, could spark this global trade war, and they could reignite inflation domestically. That's always been what we've been hearing. But they could also protect American interests, which is now the tune that Jamie Dimon is singing. He is saying that national security trumps a little bit of inflation.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
He also went on to say that he just views tariffs as a tool. That is it. They can be a weapon depending on how you use them. They can be a tool depending on how you use them. So he was just trying to provide a little bit of perspective on these things because tariffs have become such a boogeyman in a lot of these conversations.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Another quote that came out of Davos as well was the director general of the World Trade Organization said, can we chill when he was talking to CNN reporter in Davos? I think we shouldn't get overexcited about the issue of tariffs. Let's wait and see what actually gets done.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
So we're seeing a little bit of different tunes sung as we are kind of approaching the date when these things come into effect.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Our last quote comes from a place of optimism, and that is, it's in everybody's interest. And I'll pause the beat to let you guess what that is in reference to. Yep, you probably got it. It's about saving TikTok. Speaking at Davos, Bill Ford, an American venture capitalist who's on ByteDance's board.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
is optimistic that the stars will align and a deal will get done to secure TikTok's long-term future in the United States. Ford went on to say that the Chinese government, the US government, and ByteDance would likely meet by the end of this week to begin negotiations as time starts ticking on the 75 days Trump's executive order gave the app to work out a change of control deal.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Neil, inevitably, one's mind wanders to potential buyers once again, and Trump has tabbed Elon Musk and Larry Ellison as two potential options he wants to get involved, while a joint bid from Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank fame has also been floating around. What do you think, though, about this board member's optimism about this potential TikTok deal?
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
And rumor has it that if that sweatshirt has the letters MBD on it, it doubles the comfiness coefficient. Lucky for you, we still have a few Morning Brew Daily hoodies available for purchase in the Morning Brew shop.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Moving on, Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the infamous Silk Road that let you buy everything from hard drugs to fake IDs using cryptocurrency, has been granted a full pardon by President Donald Trump. It ends an over-decade-long imprisonment tied to him operating the Dark Web's Amazon, a marketplace that at its peak saw $200 million worth of illicit activity flow through the site.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Ulbricht was jailed in 2015 for creating and running the Silk Road, which resulted in two life sentences plus 40 years on charges including drug trafficking and money laundering.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
But freeing Ulbricht became a campaign talking point for Trump as he aimed to curry favor with the crypto and libertarian crowds who always champion Ulbricht for his role in demonstrating Bitcoin's effectiveness as a currency that can operate outside of the traditional finance system. Neil Ulbricht has been a martyr in these communities for his advocacy for privacy and free market principles.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
The editor of Bitcoin Magazine told the New York Times that it's hard to argue Ulbricht isn't the most successful, influential entrepreneur of the early Bitcoin era. And now that entrepreneur and that martyr is finally free.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Yeah, the judge who eventually sentenced Ulbricht back in 2015, she did not view him as this figure that was fighting for digital libertarianism.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Instead, she said that he was no better a person than any other drug dealer and passed down this pretty extreme sentence, life in prison, two times life in prison without parole, which ended up having – she was trying to discourage people from following in his footsteps – It almost had the exact opposite effect. It turned him into a martyr.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
It turned him into this figurehead that the crypto community and the libertarian community kind of put on a pedestal. And it became a very good political talking point for Trump who wanted to court the crypto community, who wanted to court the libertarian community. So he kind of took it and ran with it. He said in one quote at a libertarian party convention back in May when he's still campaigning,
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
If you vote for me on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht. So he became kind of a political, you know, instrument for Trump to use. And he followed through on his word. And soon after he was elected, he did, in fact, commute Ulbricht's sentence. All right, Neil, I've been waiting all week. I've been waiting months for this one, actually. It is Neil's numbers.
Morning Brew Daily
Musk Doubts Trump’s AI Venture & International Travel is So Back
Supplies are limited, and we're staring down at least a few more months of cold temps. So take out your phone, take out your laptop, and head to shop.morningbrew.com to get your hands on an MBD sweatshirt while they're still available. Stay warm, people. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, have I ever told you about the first time I used Yahoo Finance?
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Thank you, Neil. This day is always circled on our calendars because for as bad of a Thursday as you think you may be having, at least you didn't pay over $1.1 billion for some pizza.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Stealthy wealthy is just fantastic branding for this class of people. And a lot of things have been kind of flowing in their favor over the last few years that power these business owners into the upper echelon of earners in this country. One, just a lot of tax cuts in recent decades have supported business owners.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
And then low interest rates as well have led to, you know, surging company valuations. So even at the 0.1%, that's where you're seeing a lot of these extremely rich entrepreneurs growing. who founded these businesses that sound AI generated, like national flooring company. Doesn't sound like a real place, but that's exactly where a lot of the money is coming from here.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
By the way, poor Lazo gets all the heat for this pizza purchase, but the recipient of the 10,000 Bitcoins was Jeremy Studevant, a 19-year-old who facilitated the pizza delivery, and he later used those Bitcoins to fund a road trip with his girlfriend across the U.S., also unaware of its future value.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
So just fascinating to see how much of wealth in America is accumulated by people who run really, really boring businesses.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Yeah, this was very surprising. It probably shows that there's a fundamental disconnect between what student ideas of employable majors are and what the job market is actually giving them. And it probably stems back to the fact that our concept of a good job, our meaning like recent college grads, probably comes from your parents.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
And your parents' idea of a good job probably comes from the job market 30 years ago. So it's creating kind of a little bit of... not symmetry between grads and what jobs they're actually getting. Again, these numbers are probably pretty small in difference, so it's not like every philosophy major has a job and every STEM major doesn't have it.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
We're talking like 2% here and there, but who would have thought that nutrition, art, history, and philosophy would outperform the STEM fields?
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Maybe BlackRock would expect that, though, because their CEO recently just said that the firm is adjusting its hiring strategy for recent grads because they said, we have more and more conviction that we need people who majored in history and English and things that have nothing to do with finance or technology. So that's the biggest ass money manager in the world saying those things.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
So clearly there's been a shift in how the job market and how prospects are being valued on it.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
So that was undoubtedly both the most expensive pizza of all time and also the most expensive road trip of all time. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, you ever get a call from someone who clearly thinks you're someone else?
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
I don't think I've ever used one correctly, by the way. I literally had to go back and look up what is the proper usage of it. And it's just between, it's separating two separate clauses. And so technically you can replace it with a period. It would still have two coherent sentences, but yeah, I have not necessarily upped my semicolon usage since leaving high school.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
What is interesting though is that the semicolon occupies a unique place in a modern culture as well because when texting first came out and you had to compress your messages into much smaller and smaller packages because that's all early phones could support. Emoticons became a very popular use, the winky face of the semicolon. So it started being used that way.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
But then emojis came along and started basically taking emoticons behind the woodshed because they can convey a much wider range of emotions. So even emojis have killed the semicolon usage in its emoticon function. So it's just getting it from all sides here, literarily, and then also just emoticonally as well.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Yeah. If you looked at your portfolio yesterday and go, what the heck happened? It probably was this bond sale. And then, yeah, there is just a confluence of a bunch of factors because you are still coming off this downgrade. You are still seeing this bill progress through Congress as well.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Toss in some weak retailer earnings like we just saw with Target and the fact that higher bond yields can pull investors away from other assets like stocks. And of course, things are going to turn Finally, the four British explorers who tried a high-speed summit of Mount Everest, controversially aided by Xenon Gas, pulled off their record-setting climb early yesterday. Remember these guys?
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Former British Special Forces soldiers who pre-acclimatized themselves to low oxygen by inhaling xenon gas, allowing them to skip the typical six to eight week period that your body typically requires to adjust to high altitude. In total, it took the four men just under five days to go from base camp to summit.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Nasty stuff. Anyway, that's what bad marketing feels like. Nothing worse than blasting the wrong message to the wrong person at the wrong time. like calling a podcast host to fix a leaky sink.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Not the fastest time ever to reach the summit, but the fastest ascent without acclimatizing first. They think inhaling xenon gas to boost production of a specific protein in their blood that fights off hypoxia helped bring Basecamp to them and power the record-breaking summit. Neil, I can't believe it, but they actually went and did it.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
It did work, and I think I'm inhaling Xenon before tomorrow's podcast, see if it increases performance in the podcasting realm as well. That is not medical advice.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
OpenAI is diving headfirst into hardware, and it got the best in the biz to take it to the promised land. Yesterday, the company announced it is acquiring iO, the AI device-focused startup co-founded by the legendary Apple designer, Johnny Ive. The move brings the mind behind Apple's most iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
under OpenAI's orbit, where IVE will have the chance to shape a new generation of computers with its first design set to debut sometime next year. The deal, which values IVE at just shy of $6.5 billion, is OpenAI's biggest acquisition ever and folds IVE's 55 employees into a new open AI hardware division.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
The collaboration also unites Silicon Valley royalty and marks a major bet from Altman that the future of AI is not just a software or a chatbot, but something you can hold. We've been waiting for the next big thing for 20 years, Altman said. We want to bring people something beyond the legacy products we've been using for so long. That not so subtle dig at the status quo is
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
And a declaration that Ive and Allman are working to replace it is something investors notice as well, with Apple's stock turning negative on the day after the announcement dropped. I believe everything I've done in my career was leading to this, I've said yesterday in a launch video.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
And as someone who helped design the core of Apple's product line that turned it into the biggest company of all time, that is a lofty claim, Neil.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Yeah, Ive's AI journey is wild and probably a lot more lucrative than a lot of us. Two years ago, one of his 21-year-old sons was playing around with ChatGPT. Ive came over and then immediately reached out to Altman after using the product. They became friends, and now he just sold his friend, his company, for $6.5 billion. Classic friend move, am I right?
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Neil, find me better friends, or no offense to yourself, but you're not buying my Star Wars for $6.5 billion. So yes, that seems like a lot of money, and it is a lot of money. But if you build the iPhone for AI, then no. So it's a bet from OpenAI with asymmetric upside here.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
They think that Johnny still has his fastball and he can rethink basically how we interact with technology and computers today because that is what they are after. I don't think that we're going to see something with a normal form factor. They're not trying to make the next iPhone. They are trying to pursue something that is completely different.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Sam Allman said, I think we have the opportunity here to kind of completely reimagine what it means to use a computer. I don't know what that means. Is it glass? Is it something else? Yeah, do you have thoughts?
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Yeah, and I have to say, too, pretty big fumble for Apple here because six years ago, Apple said that, hey, we're going to continue working with you, Johnny Ive. We're going to come up with some new project. That never happened. And instead, he's going to be designing devices for a company that wants to basically kill the iPhone. So if you're looking...
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
For a company called Target, it's sure been missing the mark a lot these days. The embattled retailer reported that sales fell again last quarter as the company struggles with backlash to its DEI policies as well as tariff headwinds.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Target CEO Brian Cornell blamed the macro environment for issues, saying that five consecutive months of declining consumer confidence and uncertainty regarding the impact of potential tariffs were the major roadblocks the brand was facing.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
The stock is now down 40% over the past year and is forecasting low single-digit sales for the year ahead, which would be Target's third straight year of declining sales. Target's struggles stand in stark contrast to other retailers like Walmart and Home Depot, who showed climbing revenue and reaffirmed their full-year sales outlooks this past week.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Part of the divergence stems from the fact that Target relies more on discretionary spending on items like toys and electronics, so it's taking a bigger hit as people prioritize necessities like groceries, which plays into a company like Walmart's hands.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Then Sam Altman wants to build hardware for the AI age, and he just got Apple's best ever designer to help him do it. It's Thursday, May 22nd. Let's ride.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Plus, around half of its products are imported, leaving it especially exposed to tariffs and having to choose between absorbing higher costs or passing them on to consumers. So, Neil, things have gone from bad to worse to worse for Target, who just can't seem to turn things around.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Yeah. I mean, it does seem simple on the surface, but they just can't seem to figure it out. They've also been contending with some boycotts as well that led to declining sales because kind of early on in Trump's presidency, they rolled back some of its diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, eliminated minority hiring goals, and that move sparked a lot of backlash from
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
customers who felt like it was a betrayal of what the brand stood for for a long time. So that rollback in January was just a 180 for a lot of people and felt jarring, especially as someone as a brand that you thought you knew for a while. And then this relationship totally changed with them.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
So that's also led to declining foot traffic, which, you know, doesn't help when you're also contending with all these other factors.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
It was very funny. On the earnings call, reporters kept asking, analysts kept asking, like, please provide specifics around the company's plan for pricing. And he kept dodging and weaving, saying that we're going to pull levers here and there. So we don't necessarily know exactly what they're going to be doing despite being press about it.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
So, yeah, he knows that he doesn't want that soundbite escaping that we are raising prices.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
I do think that they have the firepower because early reviews have been, apparently it's just absolutely amazing. One influencer told Business Insider recently that this is exactly what themed parks should be and could be in the 21st century. Another travel agent said that it's spot on gorgeous with theming that's literal perfection.
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So these are people literally heaping praise on this new park because it is the most modern park we've seen thus far. But here's the big question. Is it going to hurt Disney? And the one person who doesn't really think it's going to hurt Disney is Disney's parks chief, Josh DeMauro. He said he's not really shaking in his boot.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
If something is built new in Central Florida, he said, like Epic Universe, and it brings in additional tourists, I can almost guarantee you that the new tourists coming into the market is going to have to visit Magic Kingdom. So they think it's a rising tide, floats all boats here.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
If Epic Universe actually does attract all the tourists that they think they're going to, those people are probably going to go check out Disney as well. So that might be an optimistic spin zone from a competitor or it might be.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Let's book our tickets. I haven't been to a theme park in so long. I'm from Florida, so I really should make a trek back down there to try it out. Up next, we got Neal's Numbers.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
Yes. One particular platform thinks I'm obsessed with Fabergé eggs.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
You can target buyers by industry, title, company, you name it. Everyone and their mom is on LinkedIn.
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OpenAI Drops $6.5B To Kill the iPhone? & Tariffs and Boycotts Hurt Target
LinkedIn will even 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. This episode is brought to you by WHOOP. The all new WHOOP is here. The only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance.
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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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Or just do individual matchups. Just say, look at all the data and tell me who is going to win.
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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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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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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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
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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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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
I'm not going to lie. I remember the peak of murder hornet panic back in 2019, 2020. We were all in lockdown, and we're like, now the murder hornets are coming for us as well. So thank goodness. They said the public played a huge role as well, taking pictures and reporting sightings, because of course the public played a role. If I saw a two-inch murder hornet, I would say something as well.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
These implications are actually really big because what it's implying is that there are things you can do during your lifetime that could potentially reduce your risk for dying of Alzheimer's, which is something that, of course, researchers want to dig into. Some other interesting things from this finding, too, is that
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
People who had jobs that involved navigating to a predetermined route, think bus drivers, airplane pilots, ship captains, they did not have a lower rate of Alzheimer's. So there is something about the fact that you do have to spatially reckon, you do have to memorize these routes that did contribute to lower Alzheimer's rate.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So that was just a fascinating thing that it's not just using navigational abilities, it is the fact that you cannot be riding a predetermined route.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Then the Fed issued its final rate cut of the year. So why did your stock portfolio tank? It's Thursday, December 19th. Let's ride. Good news, Neil. You can finally plan that trip to Washington State you've been putting off.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Yeah, I think it's because a lot of teens who do end up experimenting with drugs or alcohol, they usually start in the ninth grade, your first year of high school, because you see a lot of your older peers doing it. But if you break that cycle and the incoming ninth graders never saw anyone
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
drinking or smoking, never experimented with their friends, then as you filter upwards through the generations, every class after that class, the COVID class, is not going to have that experience either. So it is almost a self-fulfilling cycle where you start to see lower and lower usage rates.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
I think that was interesting because a lot of people's experimentation doesn't happen in your own room under the supervision of your parents. It happens when you're surrounded by friends, when there's peer pressure involved. So it is a really fascinating downstream effect of those COVID lockdown periods.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So congrats to Washington State. Plan your vacay there. Now a word from our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport. Neil, pardon the pun so early in the morning, but one of the best things about the Range Rover Sport is its range. It's the kind of car you can roll up to a black tie gala in, then take it to the mountains for a hike the next day.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
I get that, too, because I've been at weddings where people are watching college football games, and it is a little bit of knowing. But also just the logistics side of it, I think, is under-talked about because college football weekends are a zoo in these towns. So, like, traffic's a nightmare. Hotel rooms are hard to come by. They're very expensive as well.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So I totally understand from that perspective. They also talked to some couples, though, that just gave up and said, hey— If there's going to be a game on, let's embrace it. One couple created a game lounge at the reception venue where people could go watch the game.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
If it is such a big part of your family that people would not be paying attention to your wedding, might as well set up a screen and have everyone watch it together. I mean, we're sports fans, but that's pretty hardcore. Pretty hardcore. I cannot relate to it because we don't have, I mean, I'm an Indiana fan now this year, but I never had that, you know, crazy love for college football.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So, I mean, shout out to all the Southern couples out there. I know it's bigger. It just means more down there.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Yeah, just the fact that the Supreme Court is setting aside time for oral arguments shows that the justice do see at least some critical questions about the First Amendment here. I know we've talked a lot about this TikTok saga, but this is probably the time where we are going to finally get a decision one way or the other.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So if you've been kind of tuning it out, this is the time to, you know, tune back in.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
See, it's hard. I don't know what the Supreme Court will actually argue on the grounds of First Amendment, but I think overall, eventually, the app will not be banned just because there's so many logistical issues to it. So I'm going to say no.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
In the Venn diagram where one circle reads sophisticated luxury and the other reads pure power, guess what's sitting right in the middle? Dwayne The Rock Johnson. No, although he is a classy and powerful guy. It's the Range Rover Sport. It truly brings a new dimension to sporting luxury.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
It's not been sufficient, but also there is not just this one case in Louisiana that people are worried about. Also in California, Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency over the outbreak of bird flu, specifically related to the state's dairy cattle. They've discovered the virus in 645 herds of dairy cattle. That's more than any other in the state. They do are saying the same thing.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Risk to the public remains low, but there's definitely some threats to these cattle herds. It originally started in Texas, but now California has become kind of the epicenter of this bird flu cattle epidemic. Yesterday, OpenAI unveiled a new feature that lets you call ChatGPT directly from the phone number 1-800-CHAT-GPT. It's part marketing stunt and part useful feature edition.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
If your hands are full in the kitchen and you really want a classic, delicious lasagna recipe, but your mom isn't picking up, dial up ChatGPT and ask it for an answer. But don't chat for too long. Callers will get 15 minutes of free chats per month.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
I think it is so funny, too, that every technological advancement we've had this year is something that Google tried 10, 15 years ago. I mean, think about it. Google Glass, they were early to that. Now we're seeing all this range about Meta Ray-Bans. Obviously all the artificial intelligence stuff, they were very early to as well.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So it truly does say sometimes just timing the market is as important as actually the features that you are releasing.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
I want you to share it with the college football fans in your life. This is going to be a very stressful weekend for a lot of you. I hope none of you are getting married either, but send them this pod. Send them a little bit of Neil and Toby. Hopefully we can calm their nerves.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
To no one's surprise, the Fed announced its third and final rate cut of 2024 yesterday, reducing the benchmark rate by 25 basis points down to a range of 4.25 to 4.5%. So why did all three major indexes finish deep in the red? While the rate cut itself was all but guaranteed, it was the Fed's cautious outlook for 2025 that had investors a little spooked.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
The Fed is now projecting only two cuts next year, as opposed to the four that were anticipated back in September. The Fed also revised their forecast for inflation to 2.5%, up from the 2.1% it originally projected.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
In Jerome Powell's press conference after the announcement, he tried to frame fewer rate cuts as a vote of confidence in the economy, but he also said that the cuts announced at this meeting were a closer call than expected due to just how sticky inflation has been lately.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So, Neil, as we close out 2024 with a pretty strong economy, slowly fading inflation, and a stable job market, the question becomes, what comes next?
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Right. A lot of the reporters there asked some variations of that same question. If inflation is proving to be stickier and you're projecting it to be stickier, then why did you even cut rates on this meeting whatsoever? And it wasn't guaranteed. Even though, remember, the market was pricing a 99% chance or a 90-plus percent chance that the Fed would cut rates this meeting.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
That's because officials announced yesterday that the so-called giant murder hornets have been successfully eradicated from the state following a years-long effort to find and eliminate the non-native pest.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
There was actually a dissenting vote of the Fed officials that do vote on these rate cuts. So it was a lively discussion, I think, at that table of should we cut rates this time around. Powell's response was, in effect, that future rate cuts aren't guaranteed, so let's do it while the economy is still strong and inflation isn't too high.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
rather like a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush type approach. But you're right, the market definitely did not like that, especially because the projections got so much darker, essentially. We were looking at four rate cuts, now it's down to two, and that could shift even lower if this inflation proves to be as sticky as Powell is saying it is.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Murder hornets were first sighted in the area all the way back in 2019, but state officials quickly mobilized to try and contain their presence due to the threat the giant insects posed to their honeybee and other pollinators. Consider that threat contained, too. No hornet has been sighted in the last three years.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Let's get Powell on the pod because that's actually a very nice analogy. Congressional leaders released the text of a three-month spending bill on Tuesday that was supposed to prevent a government shutdown, but the stopgap spending bill has a lot of people big mad. Inside the over 1,500-page bill were a few head-scratching inclusions.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
There's $100 billion earmarked for disaster relief in the wake of a devastating hurricane season, economic aid for farmers, and a commitment to fully fund a rebuild of Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
But there's also a cost-of-living pay increase for members of Congress, reforms for pharmacy benefit managers, and a measure that clears the way for the Washington Commanders football stadium to be moved from Landover, Maryland, back to D.C., Two of the most vocal opponents of the bill were none other than Elon Musk and his Doge co-head Vivek Ramaswamy.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
The two wasted no time in flexing their budding political power, railing against this stopgap bill. Elon alone posted on X about the funding bill more than 100 times over the course of the last two days. And it worked. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that the current iteration of the bill is now dead, while Trump himself voiced his opposition to it as well.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
You know, this was supposed to be a pretty uncontroversial bill so Congress could regroup and figure out what their priorities were in the new year, but it's proven to be just the opposite.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Right. It put Musk out a little bit on a limb in the early days because despite some of that opposition from congressional Republicans, like no one had really come out because again, it is one of those end of year bills. It is just a tide over to keep the government running for the next three months. But Musk said, Absolutely no. He weighed in and said, like, this bill shall not pass.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
He loved that meme. He posted that multiple times. He literally posted over 100 times about this, really flexing his weight. Some people started to say, though, that this is an interesting strategy from Elon because right now he's spending some political capital – getting in on a day-to-day skirmish.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Like, this is not, in the grand scheme of things, the biggest thing that Congress is going to be facing over the next four years. But here he was tweeting 100 times about it even before Trump gets into office. So is he spending that political capital too early and too frequently? That was some of the kind of analysis of this, even though technically his...
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
you know, bullying the Congress is working in this particular instance.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
potentially, but like you said, a lot of these companies that did implement RTO policies were hoping that they would see some turnover. That was kind of the hidden thing that a lot of these companies were going for. They wanted to trim down their workforce without actually conducting layoffs.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
Where I do think you will see some of these companies taking pause, though, is that if your skilled employees and if your more senior employees are more likely to leave, that is something that you do not want. You mentioned brain drain, but yeah, some of these high position or higher pay grade positions are more difficult to feel, and you do not want that to experience a lot of turnover.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So I do think you potentially will see some pause, which we've already started to see some companies kind of rethink some of their RTO plans because they haven't gone as smoothly as they expected.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
The last swerve of this study that I want to speak about is not just the quantitative effect of RTO policy, but also the qualitative effect. A lot of employees cited why they hated RTO. One of it was just the drama that follows it. The Amazon... So much drama followed this announcement, and a lot of employees just want to work. They do not want to be constantly mired in this debate.
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
So that was one thing. And then another thing they talked about is that when you institute RTO, you're communicating a culture of distrust, saying that you're tracking our bad sign-ins, like you are making sure we're coming in. Dell was doing VPN tracking to see if people were trying to pretend they were working from one location when they weren't. So it's not just the quantitative –
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Fed’s Latest Rate Cut Reveals Uncertainty & Workers Turned Off By RTO Policies
factors and effects. It is also just the qualitative employee morale effects that you have to take into account. Speaking of taking into account, there's one more left in the year. It's the last Neal's numbers coming your way.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Wise Business knows you're busy, so setting up an account is fast and easy. It integrates with your sales and accounting software to simplify your finances, and you can make payments in just a few seconds.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Just want to be the first one to post a comment in the morning. So it's always just first, second, third. Ah, nice try. And then over on Spotify, there's this core group of listeners who just comment on audio quality a lot, which makes sense because it's an audio platform. Apple Podcasts, no idea what's going on over there because there's no comment section at all. But we love you all equally.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Let's face it, if you're listening to a podcast, you have five minutes to spare.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, it's definitely a reversal from just recent decades because you're right, there was this stigma around joining the family biz because it just seemed like the easy path and our generation of entrepreneurial or just wanted to set off on their own. They didn't want to join the boring old business that mom or dad ran.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
But now they're staring down just an economic reality that makes that job seem a lot more appealing because COVID upended the beginning parts of most young people's careers. Then there's been this huge AI boom. That's a massive disruptor. So maybe working in a steel fabrication plant seems a little more AI-proof than working a cushy marketing job somewhere in New York City.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And then you just toss in the trade war as well. And so all of a sudden, of course, you're going to phone up mom and dad. And mom and dad are probably happy, too, because they're looking to pass down these businesses, too. They don't want to work forever. They want to ensure it's in good hands. And so if your kid comes calling, then of course it becomes this appealing avenue for them as well.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
So just kind of a fascinating shift that we have been seeing maybe accelerated by recent economic conditions.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Thank you for listening no matter what platform you do it on. Sorry again for the outage. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, I was playing kickball over the weekend, classic rec league tilt, and it hit me just how important it is to have that one player who can do it all.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
obviously it leads to some weird office politics as well. If you see, you know, suddenly you're reporting to a 22 year old when you've been working there for many years. So there's a right way to do it. And it is a little testy. There's no perfect way to do it, but yeah, definitely something that we're seeing increase, especially in the face of just the current reality.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
A lot of the vehicles that these parents are using to transfer these houses to their kids are trusts. One luxury broker told Bloomberg that as much as 60% of sales last year involved parents buying for their kids, and 40% of those used a trust. Trusts are good for, one, avoiding fraud. tax ramifications. They kind of skirt some of these wealth taxes or estate transfer tax rules.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
But then two, they're also discreet. You don't have to disclose who's behind the trust versus an LLC, for instance, you have to attach your name to. So people are really digging trust as a vehicle. I mean, you've heard of trust fund kids.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
This is kind of an invasion of trust fund kids into certain areas of New York because they're just really good vehicles for passing down that wealth when it comes to housing.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
It used to be me, but now the hamstrings are getting a little dicey. Anyway, when it comes to breakfast, you want to plan it out on your team. And it's not just showing up for one thing. It's making your coffee better, your cereal smoother, your smoothie creamier. Whatever you throw at it, it'll toss it right back just that much better.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, we've talked about the fact that Apple consumers were also rushing into stores to try to buy iPhones before maybe prices rised. And we're seeing that kind of play out across the broader economy as well. We got consumer spending numbers for March yesterday, and they actually came in higher than expected, which shows maybe this rush to buy stuff before prices went up.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
So all this front-loading, all this... bringing in a ridiculous amount of product in terms of Apple seems to be the move that a lot of businesses are taking and consumers are reacting by kind of meeting that demand with spending of their own.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, the giant African harvester ant is a highly sought after species. They are prized by collectors because one, they're very big, like the queens can reach almost an inch long. So these are, I know that we're talking about smaller animals are becoming more popular, but in terms of the ant kingdom, these things are sizable. And a lot of it is because it's very hard to find this specific species.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
If you're an ant collector on any websites, I mean, two of the biggest are Ants HQ and Ants R-U-S. It sounds like, oh, Ants R Us. Sorry, geez Louise. It's like Toys R Us, but Ants R Us. And they barely have any of these species listed on their sites. And if they did, they're sold out right now. They sell them for $131 and $226.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
So you can see why this specific species was targeted by these Belgian teens because, yeah, they had some serious street value. If you thought Fyre Fest was bad, wait till you hear about this experience that Mr. Beast cooked up.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Diehard Mr. Beast fans who paid $1,000 for a Vegas experience that was supposed to be unforgettable were left trying to forget and get a refund after the event titled The Mr. Beast Experience was an abject disaster.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Resorts World Las Vegas advertised the experience as something that included a three-night stay at the hotel, a mystery bag full of exclusive merch, meet and greets, photo ops, mini games, and even a $10,000 voucher for a lucky fan. Unfortunately, we didn't get any of that, said one fan who flew from Arizona to attend.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Instead, guests posted pictures of the exclusive package that they were supposed to be receiving that ended up containing some chocolate bars and about $9 worth of merch that you can get in the clearance section of Mr. B's website. The YouTuber tried to make things right by personally inviting everyone affected by the experience to his actual studio, but still, Neil, a very tough look for him.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
I love that this one fan clearly is an experienced person because who's going to the Tom Brady experience, the Mr. Beast experience? They just love the experiences hosted by anyone and everyone. Finally, for our last headline, scientists announced they discovered alien life yesterday. And that's all the time we have. Great show, Neil. Oh, kidding.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And Barista Lovers backs it up with the numbers.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
No, but seriously, a team of researchers announced they found the strongest indication of extraterrestrial life yet on a massive planet 120 light years away from Earth, known as K2-18b.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Thanks to these super strong observational abilities of the James Webb Telescope, analysis of the exoplanet's atmosphere showed that there's a high concentration of a particular molecule also found on Earth that has only one source, living organisms. It's called dimethyl sulfide, it's made of sulfur, carbon, and hydrogen, and is a common byproduct of marine algae.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Last year, after the first reading came in from the telescope, the team of astronomers conducting the study spent an enormous amount of time trying to get rid of the signal, but a second, even stronger reading led them to conclude that K2-18b may in fact harbor about 1,000 times as much dimethyl sulfide as URCH, which suggests it sees, could be teeming with life.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
I'm not screaming aliens, said Nicole Lewis, an exoplanetary scientist at Cornell University, but I always reserve my right to scream aliens. Neil, I am not an exoplanet scientist at Cornell University, so I'll just scream it. Aliens.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, it's probably not going to be like welcome to earth people. It's going to be like amoebas or something like that. But still, this is a lot of dimethyl sulfide, so I'm bullish.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Great show today, Neil.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
In the extended poker game that is this global trade war, another chip has been played, and it literally involves chips. Earlier this week, Nvidia disclosed in a filing that the Trump administration's clampdown on sales of advanced chips to China will impact earnings to the tune of $5.5 billion. That number comes from the fact that its H20 chip inventory now falls under new restrictions.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The H20 is a watered-down version of Nvidia's higher-powered H20, H100 and H200 chips, one that was created specifically for markets like China, where full power chips are restricted. Earlier this month, the US government paused its restrictions on the sale of H20, but when you don't like your hand in poker, you have to exert pressure in other ways.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
I'm also realizing, Neil, that this poker metaphor is getting mighty confusing with all the chips flying around, But we persevere, and so will Nvidia, who had a rotten day in the stock market, falling just over 7% and bringing the entire chip sector down with it.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
The new export controls are an especially tough pill to swallow because Nvidia is fresh off announcing a $500 billion investment that will go towards building two supercomputer factories in the US, right in line with Trump's America-first manufacturing policies. All in all, an annoying turn of events for the chipmaker, who has suddenly found itself as the biggest US-China bargaining chip.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, that's 200% last year that it soared, but it looks like half a trillion dollars only goes so far these days because an escalating trade war isn't just a great backdrop for any of a high-tech good to go towards China. NVIDIA did design this chip specifically for this purpose, and it's not like this is a top-of-the-line chip. I mean, Morgan Stanley analysts say that H20's performance is about
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
75% below Nvidia's H100 family. And even since that note came out, they've released a Blackwell chip that even exceeds the performance of the H100. So this is not a top-of-the-line chip by any stretch of the imagination. So this inability to sell even low-performing chips into the Chinese market is just a bit of a business scrambler if you are Nvidia at this point.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And Nvidia is definitely going to be peeved too. I mean, they've done everything right there. A spokesperson said that, hey, look at the taxes we pay. We have a US-based workforce. We are a technology leader. Heck, our exports actually help the US fix its trade deficit with China, which is the whole point of the tariffs is to bring that deficit downward.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
So they're just sitting here saying, I thought we checked every single box, crossed our T's, dot our I's, and yet here they still are.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Then Chinese TikTokers are slinging luxury goods directly from factory floors, but are $6 yoga pants legit? It's Thursday, April 17th. Let's ride.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
True. It has a pretty massive rainy day fund. It's long hoarded cash and built up its budget to withstand quote-unquote shocks. Some of those shock absorbers are, one, obviously the $53 billion endowment, the most of any school. Two, it's got a pristine AAA credit rating. And three, it's actually got an annual budget surplus of about $45 million. So,
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
All that affluence and prior planning makes it pretty well situated to weather this storm. But how long can it rely on its endowment? It's definitely a temporary thing, even though that number sounds very big. There's pretty strict rules over what you can actually use an endowment for. About 80% of the funds are restricted to specific purposes like finance.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
financial aid like professorships and scholarships. And most of the federal funding that it was receiving was tied to this academic and scientific research. So you can't necessarily just like for like plug that $2 billion hole that you now have because these funds are restricted and deemed towards certain purposes.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Yeah, and Harvard has some options available to it to shore up, even though it's already sizable, rainy day funds. Some of those are selling debt for short-term funding. A lot of colleges have recently sold taxable bonds. Harvard did so last week. They sold $750 million worth of It's a pretty easy market for colleges to access.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And so they have a lot of flexibility around how they can use those funds. And it goes back to stuff that Harvard did in the wake of 2008. They really kind of retrenched. They made themselves much more resistant to big shocks like this. The AAA credit rating is a big part of that, too, because they have all these lines of credit that they can now tap into.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
So Harvard specifically will be probably all right. The long-term ramifications of pausing research on things like, AIDS research or cancer research or organ transplants, that's where people say, we probably won't see the shocks now, but maybe down the line when that research isn't taking place, that's going to affect a lot of things and a lot of part of the really entire U.S. economy as well.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
A Chinese e-commerce app is attracting a lot of American dollars, but it's not Xi'an or Timu. Driven by a string of viral videos posted on TikTok, the little-known app DHgate surged to the top of Apple's free app charts and is now sitting in second place as of this morning. DHgate's sudden popularity came from videos posted by Chinese influencers pulling back the curtain on global supply chains.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
In the videos, the influencers exposed luxury fashion brands from Hermes to Lululemon, purportedly showing how these name brands are actually being made in Chinese factories. Apps like DHgate allow global consumers to capitalize on this by buying direct from Chinese factories at much more affordable prices and without the branding.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
It was very funny to see all the Spotify listeners come over to YouTube. It was like two different MBD tribes making contact for the first time. And it was mostly peaceful. Some said, hey, it's kind of nice over here. I think I'll stay. So that was a nice byproduct of the outage. It's also two different commenting cultures I've noticed. There's this core group of YouTube listeners who...
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
One video that has racked up 10 million views shows a woman boasting that the yoga pants she's offering are made out of the same material and with the same craftsmanship as Lulu, but can be bought for just $5 to $6. So even after tariffs are applied, they're still less than what Lulu would charge you.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Another video shows a man in a factory showing off a Louis Vuitton-style bag for only 50 bucks, again making the claim that they're the same manufacturer as the real deal. Now, is a Louis bag for $50 or leggings for $5 too good to be true? Probably.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Louis Vuitton has repeatedly emphasized that they don't make any of their goods in China, while a Lulu spokesperson clarified that only 3% of its products are manufactured in China. Still, Neil, these videos are the latest in the surge of trade war TikTok content that's been blowing up ever since Trump rolled out the new tariffs.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
It's a new battleground when it comes to trade, but also when it comes to just public opinion.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Well, there's actually a little bit of nuance between what a counterfeit is and what a dupe is, because counterfeits are just like you're trying to pass it off as a real thing, but it's just made of much worse materials. Dupes are just de-branded versions of high-quality goods, and dupe culture has actually taken on a name of its own over in China. It's called
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
and Gen Z use it to reflect the popularity of people moving from label loving to saying, I just want high quality stuff. So there's been this big market that is not the counterfeit market, but it is the dupe market of people saying, maybe I don't need that logo on my Hermes bag or whatever, or my Lululemon leggings. Maybe I just need high quality goods.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
And that's been a massive culture shift that's been percolating over the last year or so. So there is a slight difference between dupes and counterfeits. Make sure, though, if you are buying anything, you want to fall in the dupe category. You don't want to fall in the counterfeit category. Special edition of Toby's Trends on Thursday. Seriously, you get them. I can't stop trending.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
That's just the name of the game. All right, let's take a quick break and hand it over to Neil for his numbers right after this.
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Nvidia Stock Falls in US Brawl with China & Harvard's $2.2B Fund Freeze
Wise Business provides you with one account for all your international business finances. You can pay vendors, suppliers, and manage expenses in over 40 currencies.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
I just want to reiterate that the fire got within six feet, one inches of the Getty Museum. Six foot, that one inch is important, Neil. But yes, this museum was designed by the architect to avoid burning all the way back in the 70s. They were already thinking about making it fire resistant. Another thing that contributes to it is that they have energy.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
a lot of big plazas in between the actual outer grounds and the inner building. So it makes it trickier for the fire to spread across those kind of wide swaths of plaza as well. They also, the museum staff was very vigilant. They would go around each day with fire extinguishers in hand, look for embers on the ground, look for embers in the oak trees as well, and just putting them out
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Then John Deere is in trouble with the FTC for making its tractors too dang hard to repair. It's Thursday, January 16th. Let's ride.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
So part of it was good planning, but then part of it is also just being very vigilant by the museum staff in the current day over the past few weeks. Have you been to that museum? I haven't. I couldn't believe.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Now a word from our sponsor, Public.com. Neil, you know what's better than finding $20 in your old jeans? Finding $10,000? Well, those are some big jeans. But yes, when you transfer your investment portfolio to Public, you could earn up to $10,000. And they make it super simple.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
This is the tough part. Britain thinks the world revolves around it And Americans refuse to pay attention to anything outside of America. So it was an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object here. But Neil, I knew you were going to do this. I knew you were going to call him a monkey. He is not portrayed as a monkey. He's actually portrayed as a chimpanzee. And chimpanzees are not monkeys.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
They are apes. If you want a little cheat sheet to how do you distinguish between a monkey and an ape, apes don't have tails while monkeys generally do. So That was one thing that I knew you were going to call him a monkey because everyone's called him a monkey, but he's actually... He could have told me before the show, and we didn't have to do this.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
That's the only song that we know, Angels. It's pretty good, though.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
I mean, this is one of those things that you read the headlines and every single shopper goes, no, duh. It, of course, is this onerous procedure to try to get someone to come over, unlock, you just want some deodorant. Everyone has experienced it. It has not been a good shopping experience.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
So to hear the CEO come out and say, oh, wait, it actually didn't work, that was an eye-rolling moment for a lot. That being said, though, they did, Walgreens reported a 52% increase in shrink, which is the industry term for lost inventory, over that 2020-2021 period. So you can't fault them for trying something. This was just not the correct thing to try.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
We've gotten artificial intelligence, Apple intelligence, and now the dating app Hinge has introduced a new AI tool called relationship intelligence. What used to come from your older sister now comes via a new feature within the app designed to evaluate the quality, depth, and originality of a user's messages. In other words, it's trying to save you from being too basic.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Once you're in, you've got access to their full menu of investment options, stocks, crypto, bonds, options. It's all there.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
So no more looking for the gym to my Pam or the dog mom to my dog dad. under the AI's watchful eye. The goal is to improve the quality of messages users send each other, and in the process, improve the dating landscape that has increasingly left users feeling burnt out and uninspired.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
It was a very viral stunt. And I think it was because there was this grand metaphor within the metaphor itself, which is Grand Central is this beautiful place. The terminal is something that has all this grandeur to it. And yet here in the middle of it was this drudgery that's going on that just working at their computers. And then also the people going through it are
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Head to public.com slash morningbrew and see why millions of investors trust Public with their portfolios.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
not necessarily taking in the grandeur. They are also experiencing the drudgery of a commute. So it was working on a lot of different layers. A lot of marketing people were writing these think pieces about it because it was so beautiful. And then there's also the deeper level of Lumen, which is the company that they work out in the show, uh,
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
puts their employees under constant surveillance, and here they are in a literal glass box being surveilled. So surveillance capitalism had some themes as well. So a lot of different metaphorical themes, but also just very cool to see famous people in the middle of Grand Central.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Coors Light is changing its name, rebanding as Mondays Light for a limited time in preparation for the worst Monday of the entire year, the day after the Super Bowl. The marketing stunt involves replacing the word Coors on its packaging with Mondays, with the new packaging rolling out across the country beginning this month for a limited time.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Coors is hoping the hack will inspire renewed interest in the brand that is a bit of a case of the Mondays itself. After a temporary surge in sales following Bud Light's brand debacle, Coors has returned back to earth as Americans cut back on alcohol spending. Neil, we just talked about one marketing stunt. What do we think about this marketing stunt?
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
If you opened your brokerage account yesterday, you were finally greeted with some green numbers looking back at you. The Dow surged 700 points, the S&P 500 had its best day since November, and the Nasdaq snapped a five-day losing streak as the market digested a favorable inflation report and a solid start to fourth quarter earnings.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
I don't know. I don't hate that take. I think it's probably because we both just have jobs where we have to work very early in the morning, wake up very early in the morning. If you're going in at 9, maybe you will go a little harder there. But I actually don't hate that take at all, Neil. We agree on something here.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
I thought you were going to say, though, I don't get all the hype around hating Mondays. You're so excited to get back to work every day that you love Mondays. No.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
I want you to share today's episode with someone who hasn't seen Severance season one. Neil has been hounding me to finish it before the next season drops on Friday.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
The CPI report, which measures the monthly and annual price changes for consumer goods, showed that the Fed's fight with inflation is far from over, but had some bright spots too. The index rose 0.4% from November to December and was up 2.9% from a year earlier in line with expectations.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
However, core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, fell to 3.2% below expectations of 3.3%. That reading spurred a little optimism in traders and boosted hopes that Jerome Powell and the Fed will continue its rate-cutting campaign throughout this year. On top of the CPI report, fourth quarter earnings got off to a strong start, headlined by the largest banks. J.P.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Morgan, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs all reported quarterly and annual financial results yesterday that beat analysts' expectations as a pickup in corporate dealmaking fattened profits. JP Morgan CFO Jeremy Barnum went so far as to say that there is, quote, no question that we are in an animal spirits moment right now.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Neil, judging from yesterday's market performance, I don't think John Maynard Keynes would disagree with him.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
And then let's zoom in on the CPI report as well, which was a little bit of a mixed bag, because again, we did see inflation actually rise on a monthly basis from November to December. So why is that a good thing for the market? The market was pretty fired up about core CPI, which again, cuts out those food and energy prices, which can be pretty volatile. I mean, this is a colder than expected.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
January, for instance, with the weather does that, it usually jacks up natural gas prices, but those are more short-term monthly trends. The Federal Reserve likes looking at the core measures because it gives a better picture of these broader trends and takes away some of those temporary issues. And so when you look at core inflation, it was a decent look.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Again, it's not necessarily going down, but it's not going up either. So it was kind of a mixed bag, but at this point, current time, it didn't set off any fears that we're going to see any rate hikes in the upcoming year. And it did kind of resume hope that the Fed will just get back on its pace of maybe two to three rate cuts in 2025.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
groups are doing a little bit of a victory laugh because this has been a long time coming for them. They have always been frustrated with this so-called regulatory paradox that is Red 3 because it's been illegal in the use in cosmetics. You can't put it in your lipstick, your red lipstick, for instance, and yet it's perfectly legal to
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
have in candy corn, to have in these foods that you serve to children in the form of these bright red foods that line the aisles. That is because that even though that it has been found to cause cancer in lab rats, there's a study that showed it caused increased tumor growth within lab rats.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
They didn't see that replicated in humans, so they said it is fine for humans to consume, but that has just never made sense to a lot of these advocacy groups that if there's any sort of chance that this is cancer-causing, why should it be allowed in our food supply? So it's been a long time coming. People are celebrating.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
We were talking about what do you replace Red Dye 3 with just off the top of our brains, and I said like maybe cherry juice, but it actually is gonna be some natural forms like beet juice, because beets, if you've ever had that, very red, stains your fingers red. There's also carmine, which is a dye made from insects.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
And then there's also pigments you can get from foods like purple sweet potatoes, radishes, and red cabbages. So obviously the food industrial complex has been getting ahead of this issue and have found some suitable replacements.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
The FTC is fed up with John Deere for making their high-tech tractors so hard to fix and sued the agricultural equipment maker yesterday, accusing it of illegally forcing farmers to spend big bucks at authorized dealers in order to make critical repairs.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
It's a big win for the right-to-repair movement that has fought to remove some of these onerous proprietary restrictions companies keep in place to try and boost their bottom lines. stuffed to the gills with complicated computers over the past few decades.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
As the yellow and green machines grew more complex, Deere made it so only its authorized dealers could access the software tools necessary to make repairs, which farmers view as really annoying and time-consuming, and the FTC views as anti-competitive. Neil, this is one of the last actions of a Lena Kahn-led FTC before Trump's new chair takes her spot and she's going to bat for farmers.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Biden followed up that ceasefire announcement with his farewell address to the nation last night. He used his platform to sound the alarm about the, quote, dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra wealthy people and the rise of the, quote, tech industrial complex that he says puts our basic rights and freedoms at risk.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
And it's kind of tough because the FTC has five commissioners, two Republicans and three Democrats. Both of the Republican commissioners did actually vote against this enforcement action. And the new head of the FTC coming in under the Trump administration. voted against it as well. So it looks like potentially this could be under some threat under Trump's administration.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
That being said, though, it is a still a win for these farmers who have just been so frustrated because a lot of them grew up being able to fix their machines and use their skills to their advantage. But now they've been forced to, in some cases, hack their own tractors in order to repair them.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
The media company 404 Media has talked to farmers who have pirated software from Ukraine and other countries in order to make it past this annoying firewall that John Deere puts in place in order to hack their own machines. So definitely been a pain point and definitely been something that I think a lot of the agricultural industry would love to see some movement on.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Up next, I haven't said this in three weeks, it is time for Neil's Numbers!
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America, Biden explained, of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our democracy. Biden's remarks come as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are set to have courtside seats to Trump's inauguration on Monday, with Zuckerberg topped to host a black tie reception for the incoming administration.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
Yeah, anecdotally speaking, you are seeing potentially fewer traffic jams. People are looking out their office windows and going, hey, this street used to always be covered in cars. Now it's not as much, less honking, more curbside parking available. But I don't want to pour water on things, but this data comes with a lot of asterisks.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
It's only one week of data so far, so it's too early to really make any definitive conclusions whatsoever. Also, there's no great historical data to compare this because they weren't measuring congestion the way that they currently are. So there is no real perfect comparisons yet possible. Also, you mentioned it, the cold weather could be a confounding variable here.
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Big Banks Fuel Stock Market Rally & The FTC's Next Target... John Deere
It's been really cold in New York this January so far. So maybe people are just staying home because it's so cold out there. So those are a few of the asterisks to pour some cold water and some cold weather on this data. But Again, early signs are encouraging.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Then Max played an Uno reverse card on itself and is becoming HBO Max again. It's Thursday, May 15th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
But I made a terrible mistake. I trusted the group chat when they said it was a costume party. Oh, no. Yep. Showed up as Shrek. Full green face paint. Turns out it was a baby shower in a brownstone. Toby, never trust the group chat. Don't I know it. But somehow that's what brands do every day when they rely on outdated campaigns.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
I mean, grumble about the fact that there's no tourists. That's what New Yorkers do. They grumble about everything. But I do think that I was, first of all, surprised that travel makes up 9% of the U.S. economy. That was a larger portion than I expected. But then you look at what foreign travelers do when they come to America, and they spend an average of... $4,000 per trip.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
That is eight times more than domestic travelers. So as you're going on your Memorial Day weekend trips, you're not spending as much as someone who flew in from the UK or Korea or something like that, which by the way, we are seeing lower numbers from pretty much all countries. Arrivals from the UK and South Korea both dropped 15%. Germany arrivals dropped 28%. And then
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Other staple markets for the United States like Spain and Ireland fell between 24% and 33%. So it's not just one country, which you're probably thinking that one country is maybe Canada, which is New York is getting wrecked by Canada as well. They expect a 17% decline in tourism. But it's not just our neighbors to the north.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
It really is our neighbors all over the world that are not coming to the United States.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
I don't think people have really come to terms of what it means for not only the Pope to be American, but be an American sports fan. We are seeing Chicago embrace him in a way that, you know, you just don't get with an international Pope potentially. And I do love that Topps also included some variations on each card. So you of the background.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
So obviously the, the main is Pope Leo, but then the backgrounds include deep dish pizza, Chicago hot dogs, snow and skyline variation. So I wonder which one of those is going to be, you know, in a hundred years, the most valuable card, but great move from tops, by the way, to seize on this moment, because it is just such a unique once in a generation opportunity.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
And they made some nice money off of it.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
They think they know what the customer wants, but they're just trusting the group chat.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Yeah, there's two camps of naysayers here. There's one that's saying that Xenon doesn't really help. It could be dangerous. But then there's the other camp saying that it does kind of remove from the purity of climbing Everest. But that debate has been happening since people started climbing Everest because 7,269 people have reached the summit of Mount Everest.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Only 230 have done it without the aid of supplemental oxygen. So there is a faction of the community that says Even using oxygen at all kind of defeats the whole purpose of climbing it. And you see that just very small number of people who do it without any outside aid. So Xenon is maybe just another evolution of that debate. It's another gas.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
It's another aid that will help you climb the mountain easier than just going up completely without any help. any aids at all. So just a fascinating debate. I am very curious to see how they do. I hope it succeeds, honestly, because it makes it safer, too, if you climb it quicker because your less time spent on the mountain means less time things can go wrong, weather can come in.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
No more lobbing out random emails and texts and hoping they land and drive sales. With Iterable, your marketing can be always on, always in the right moment, and never showing up in green face paint. Stay relevant, stay invited. And never trust the group chat. Visit endthecampaign.com for more.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
So maybe it's a huge training aid for Sherpas who can zip up and down much more quickly. So there is a potential part of the community who does want to see it succeed because of the safety implications that it could have to make things more safe.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Yeah, Starbucks used to have a much stricter dress code. Back in 2016 and prior, they only allowed baristas to wear black and white shirts, but then they relaxed that and let them do different colors, and it became a key part of just the expressions of these individual workers.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
But now, I mean, Brian Nichol has a game plan literally called Back to Starbucks, so of course he's looking back into the history to some of its more successful periods. So you can see the allure of just saying, hey, we want the coffee to be front and center. just take out every other variable. Let's make the shirts black.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
But then you start getting into the nitty gritty of what this dress code actually means. They only gave two free shirts to employees. So they have multiple shifts. They're going to go out and buy clothes. And then you take a step back and go, is this actually the most important thing? But maybe everything adds up on the margin. So you can see it both ways here.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
But yeah, clearly it's rubbing a certain group of employees the wrong way. Well, yesterday was a holiday for a lot of Americans as the NFL finally released the full schedules of all 32 teams. As always, the defending Super Bowl champions kicked the season off with the Neils, Philadelphia Eagles playing a game against a charity team. I mean, it's rivals the Dallas Cowboys on September 4th.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
There are a record seven international games this year as the NFL continues its slow expansion towards worldwide domination.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Sao Paulo Brazil will be treated to a Chargers Kansas City game while the remaining six take place across England Ireland Germany in Spain apologies to our friends across the pond in London though who are being subjected to watching the Jaguars take on the Rams in Wembley this October Neil it's only May and yet here we are talking about football again what are you looking forward to
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
After a brutal year for Boeing, filled with door plugs flying off, production halts, and Senate grillings, the skies are finally kind of clearing. It just landed its biggest ever order, with Qatar Airways agreeing to purchase up to 210 wide-body aircraft in a deal worth $96 billion, though discounts are expected. The deal comes as President Trump is considering using a luxury Boeing 747 jet,
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
And then you just mentioned that it's a fun day on social media, too, because each team puts a ton of effort into their releases, into their announcements. And the gold standard was the Chargers, who released a full anime movie the last year. They backed it up with a Minecraft-themed launch that got over 70,000 likes on X. The Falcons did a Mario Kart-themed one. The Ravens went...
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Severance themed, which was actually interesting. And then the Jaguars, who I kind of beat up upon earlier, got Ashton Hall, the morning routine influencer dude who dunks his head in Saratoga water to do their release. That one was also very popular.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Gifted from Qatar to serve as a temporary Air Force one despite bipartisan concerns that it would pose security risks still It's a major win for most of the parties involved Qatar because it helps cement themselves as a major player in air travel Trump who wants to secure jobs back at home and Boeing who gets a lot of money it hasn't been all sunshine and free peanut packets for Boeing though who has classed with Trump at times as
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
for being late in providing two new Air Force One presidential jets that they started working on on Trump's first term. But when you combine the historic order praised by Trump with a new trade thaw with China, Boeing stock is suddenly up 50% since April, totally erasing losses from its post-liberation day lows. These past few months, Neil, has made it clear that Boeing
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
can thrive under Trump's brand of geopolitics, but they've also shown just how risky it is to be a bargaining chip on the trade war chessboard. So a little bit of a mixed bag of nuts.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
What's the deal with this Air Force One saga, though? Remember, Boeing was awarded this $3.9 billion fixed price contract back in 2018 to deliver these two new Air Force One jets by 2024. They were going to be upgraded. They were going to have a new missile system, nuclear protection, the whole nine yards.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
But now they're at least three years behind schedule, and they've already lost $2.5 billion on the deal due to cost overruns that they can't pass on to the U.S. government because of the contract's fixed price clause.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
It's been a variety of things, supply chain chaos, the pandemic happened, there's been a lot of security clearance issues, but that has been emblematic of Boeing's futility over the past few years. Now, these deals are pouring in as it's being used as this trade war chip, where Trump is saying, look at this, this is an example that this Build America movement is working because Boeing is...
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
It still is an iconic American manufacturer. So weirdly, it's come out on top of this trade war as Trump uses it as this example of what he's trying to do.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Yeah, this was very easy to see coming. When you have an all-knowing assistant in your pocket, of course students are going to utilize it. But I think what has taken some people by surprise is how professors are utilizing it as well. I mean, professors have a lot of work to do as well. you know, in addition to his students.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
So maybe the sirens call of AI is something that we should have expected there as well. But this New York Times piece was filled with students noticing that some of their prompts in their lecture series that they're listening to their professor give were filled with distorted images that were clearly AI generated.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Some students actually have gone and requested refunds for their tuition because they said, I don't want to come here and be taught by AI, just like you don't want me to submit AI work myself. But then a lot of other teachers are saying like, hey, it's helped a lot because now I can develop custom custom chat bots to help aid with people who want questions but don't want to come to office hours.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
They can help me develop my lesson plan. So it really has been an interesting infiltration at the highest levels of education that professors are adopting, not just students.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
And I was kind of rolling my eyes at some of these pieces of students submitting AI work, because to me, that's just bad cheating in general. And that New York mag piece did have students saying like, mainly what I'm learning out of college is how to manipulate these systems to make them not look like they're AI generated. He says, you,
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Eric, who is one of the students interviewed, says you put a prompt into ChatGPT, then you put the output into another AI system, then you put it in another one. At that point, if you put it in an AI detection system, it decreases the percentage of AI used every time. It's just AI all the way down. I'll leave with this kind of anecdote from a high school teacher.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
You know who the big winner here is? It's CERN, because they are trying to build a successor to the Large Hadron Collider. And that tunnel's gonna be 56 miles long, three times the size of the current collider. And you wanna know how to get people on board with a project of that size? Turn some lead into gold. But you are right. Maybe people are thinking, oh, lead into gold.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
He said, I literally told my class, hey, don't use AI, but if you're going to cheat, you have to cheat in a way that's intelligent. You can't just copy exactly what it spits out, and I think that just is indicative of where the education system is heading. It's mainly going to teach you how to manipulate AI systems rather than learn the subject matter itself.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
What is Dead May Never Die is an iconic line from the HBO series Game of Thrones, which originally aired on HBO Go, but then made its way over to HBO Max after the platform rebranded. Then you could find it on Simply Max a year later. That's Max with a purple icon, of course. But if purple wasn't your thing, a blue icon was waiting just around the corner.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
before in black and white one debuted this past year. But yeah, the line seems pretty applicable to Warner Bros. Discovery's branding process because yesterday the streaming service resurrected the HBO brand once more and is now once again known as HBO Max. Whew!
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
The whole point of launching Max in the first place was to shed some HBO association, which, while prestigious, made it hard for Warner Bros. Discovery to market the platform as a home for family-friendly Discovery content post-merger. Once you put HBO in the name, it's tough to convince parents that a platform that airs Euphoria is also the place their kids should go to watch Animal Planet.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
But yesterday's press release contained a line that helps explain the decision to bring back HBO. No consumer today is saying they want more content, but most consumers are saying they want better content. And where does better content live? Well, if you're a fan of The Sopranos, The Wire, House of Dragon, White Lotus, Industry, The Last of Us, or Righteous Gemstones, that content lives on HBO.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
So it seems like this reintroduction of HBO is... Is it a mission by Warner Bros. Discovery that maybe they shouldn't have dropped it in order to let 90 Day Fiance live side by side with Tony Soprano? Sure, it took a while to get there, Neil, but probably the right move.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Yeah, they definitely threaded the needle. They just got out ahead of it all on social media. They made all the jokes that we were going to make. We still made the jokes because it is a very funny process. But I do think this all kind of stems back to Netflix in a way, because Netflix has been the clear winner of the streaming wars. We've known that for a while now.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Maybe you self-fund this billion-dollar project. No, it's going to take a while because even though the scientists created 86 billion gold atoms, that only weighs up to 29 picograms, which is about eight trillionth of a gram. So get to colliding, sir, because you got a lot of gold to make. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, last weekend... I went to a party. Very social of you.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
It's sitting at over 300 million global subscribers. And it was part of the reason why Warner Brothers and Discovery merged in the first place is that they were trying to compete with this end-all be-all streaming platform and make some gains and try to catch up to Netflix's subscriber numbers. And so in terms of pure output, it was a smart decision to bring it all under one unified brand.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
call it Max, ditch the HBO, try to get the family, the kids to come watch on this platform. But as they've kind of gone through this process, they realized that it didn't make sense to ditch their most iconic brand. It didn't make sense to, you know, try to not draw attention to your best performing content.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
And maybe Dr. Pimple Popper and 90 Day Fiancé wasn't ever meant to be on the same platform as, you know, these high prestige TV shows. So I do think that It was a roundabout way. Sometimes you pivot so hard you end up exactly back where you started, but it's probably the right place for them to be. Up next, we got some Neal's numbers coming your way.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion. Without them, we'd be lost, literally and figuratively. And here's the good news.
Morning Brew Daily
Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
Wise helps you manage your business's finances in 40-plus currencies, all with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs. It's fast, too. Sounds like a business's best friend. To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
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Boeing Scores $96B Deal with Qatar & ‘Max’ Gets Its ‘HBO’ Back
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Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
We're making progress. With Invesco QQQ, you can rethink what's possible. Before investing, consider the fund's investment objective, risks, charges, and expenses. Visit Invesco.com for a prospectus with this information. Read it carefully before investing. Full disclosure in podcast description.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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 –
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Now it has more than 300 million subscribers, giving its homepage more influence over content decisions than virtually any other entertainment platform. So what is going to be different? For one, the endless tiles populating your screens with shows and movies are being vastly trimmed down with more video and animation taking its place.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
The display will also be way more responsive to what you're searching for. So for example, If you're searching for a war documentary, the home feed will almost instantaneously populate with more content from the same genre. Exec said the change was a response to more people logging into Netflix and not knowing what they wanted to watch.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Oh yeah, though I was very locked in on the dream house part. I wanted a skylight, obviously, a secret door behind a bookcase, and a fridge that never runs out of food. I had very elevated taste.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
So the platform's design needs to do more work in suggesting the right picks for them. Plus, they've got a whole lot of live programming now that they want to highlight.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
And that's not the only inspiration they're borrowing from TikTok, because they also said they're going to be testing a vertical video feed in the Netflix app on mobile, where you scroll TikTok style through their shows and movies. And they think that this is how people... consume movies and TV. And I know you basically watch every movie in 60 second increments on Instagram.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
So that's something that some of you might see on your mobile Netflix app coming up soon. Okay, my second number highlights the breathtaking amount of front-running going on to rush in products to the US before tariffs kick in, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Facing the threat of tariffs on foreign-made drugs, the US imported an astonishing $20 billion more of pharma products in the first three months of 2025 than it did during the same period last year, $68.7 billion versus $48.7 billion in the first quarter of 2024.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
The record inflows came as President Trump on Monday threatened to unveil tariffs on drugs made abroad in the next two weeks, which would be an unprecedented action intended to boost domestic drug production. Many of those drugs being rushed in are coming in from outside. Ireland, where U.S.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
pharma companies have set up almost two dozen factories to make products like the weight loss drug Zepbound. That contributed to the U.S. 's trade deficit with Ireland more than doubling year over year in the first quarter. Toby, the level of stockpiling happening, especially in pharma, is just astounding.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Okay, my final number is 233, which is the number of U.S. cities where a typical starter home costs at least $1 million, according to Zillow. If that sounds like a lot, it is. 233 is nearly triple the number from five years ago. Meanwhile, million-dollar starter homes are creeping into areas that were once considered affordable places to live.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
And it's customizable to your preferences. Maybe you're in a coffee mood or have a hankering for smoothies. It's there to meet your taste buds where they're at. especially barista lovers. That thing froths like it's got its own latte art degree. Dream house or not, you deserve a fridge that treats you right. Start with Planet Oat.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Now, half of all states, 25, have at least one city with million-dollar starter homes. including Minnesota and Rhode Island. Five years ago, there were just 10 states on this list. Just to define our terms here, Zillow considers starter homes the least expensive houses in a given market and those in the bottom third of home values in the area.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
So the fact that those are $1 million in a growing number of cities, it reflects a housing market that is increasingly out of reach for Gen Z and millennials who are starting families. And the younger folks have stayed on the sidelines.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Get this, the median age of a first-time homebuyer reached 38 last year, the oldest on record, and their share of total home purchases dropped to 24%, also a historic low.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
I literally couldn't believe that this was the plot of the book, was basically his videos. But then when you think about it, this is what he does. He knows the formula. He has 390 million YouTube subscribers from this formula, and he thinks that it will port over to... the book world. So I can see why all of these publishers were scrambling over this deal.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Like it was a Mr. Beast challenge because yes, Mr. Beast, most followed YouTuber in the world, James Patterson sold more than 400 million copies. You put them together. I mean, if this doesn't go to the top of the bestseller list right away, something's wrong.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
You know when you're driving and it starts raining really hard, like enough so that your wipers can't keep up and you just pull over to the side of the road and wait it out? That is what the Federal Reserve is doing right now. The U.S. central bank held interest rates steady at their meeting yesterday.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
That's what I would call myself in all the group projects in college.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Very cool. I mean, not just that we're in podcasts, but it's just a sign. that this industry is really growing up. There was a new report out yesterday that showed that the industry sales total was more than double most estimates. Alan Coe reported that the global podcast industry generated $7.3 billion in sales last year. And I remember when I started at Morning Brew in 2017, that number was like
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
300 million dollars so this medium has exploded it's gone into video with Spotify and YouTube now the number one and number two platforms really leaning into video so we'll see who wins in 2026 we do have to we have to get into that top 25 before then And finally, Utah's hockey team is getting a permanent name, Utah Mammoth.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
During the franchise's inaugural season last year, it was known as Utah Hockey Club, but that was just a placeholder. The owners held four rounds of fan voting on a new name and even potential logos, and yesterday they announced the Utah Mammoth won. Why Mammoth?
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Because more than 10,000 years ago, herds of mammoths set up shop in Utah, presumably because of the delicious dirty sodas, and lots of fossils have been found since. Plus, according to the team, evidence suggests mammoths charged in herds at speeds exceeding 25 miles per hour, comparable to the speeds reached by the fastest skaters in the NHL. Sure. Either way, Toby, tusks up.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
What do you think of the name? Tusks.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
The same level rates have been at since December because Chair Jerome Powell says the economic picture is too foggy to do anything but hang on the sidelines. We don't feel like we need to be in a hurry. We feel like it's appropriate to be patient, he said. And when things develop, of course, we have a record of, we can move quickly when that's appropriate. Powell and millions of U.S.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
One of these days, you know, there's going to be a very literal name that sticks. They were Utah Hockey Club for a year, and then they became the Utah Mammoth. We also had the Washington football team before they became the Commanders.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
At some point, I hope someone just sticks with the very strict literal name of just saying the sport and then team like they do with soccer in England and in the MLS, I guess. Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Thursday. If you have any thoughts on the show, please reach out.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Send an email with any questions, comments, or feedback to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Scoop Stardaris is on audio. Hair and Makeup is also writing a book with James Patterson.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
businesses have been sent scrambling in the past few months after President Trump launched massive tariffs on the rest of the world to reshore manufacturing. Many of those tariffs remain in limbo, but 145% tariffs on China are in effect and trade is plummeting. In a stark warning for the economy, Powell predicted that tariffs could drive up inflation and slow economic growth down the road.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
And probably the headline quote from his press conference, he said, if the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they're likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
In other words, he's warning of stagflation, an unusual but noxious combo for the economy where prices are higher, but people are still getting laid off from work at the same time. Still, this is Powell gazing into his crystal ball because as it stands, tariffs have not yet significantly impacted the economy. And so Powell remains in wait and see mode.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
And the soft data would be like plunging consumer sentiment and people generally feeling bad about the economy. And the reason that Powell is in this position of paralysis is that because their two goals are really in tension right now. They're butting up against each other. Their two goals, the Fed, this is their mandate. They want low unemployment and low inflation.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
But in the scenario that he predicts, this stagflationary scenario, that leads to very confusing moves with interest rates, because if the Fed was more scared by inflation from these tariffs, then they'd keep rates high because that brings down inflation. But if they were more scared by the job market cratering, which is economic slow growth, then they'd cut rates.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, pray for Disney adults after the company announced it was building a new theme park in a surprising location.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
So there's two things that are being held in tension right now. It's like opening up your fridge and you see your three day leftovers and you also see like moldy carrots, and you're just like, eh, I'm probably just going to go to bed without eating dinner because both these situations are awful. And that's exactly what Powell is facing right now.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
huge deal. That one sentence, you know, is such a landmark moment, perhaps in this AI revolution. Ever since ChatGPT was released in October, November 2022, we've been waiting for this moment. When would be the moment that AI search options would start to replace Google? For the past three years, Google has done just fine. Earnings report after earnings report, they said search traffic is up.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Even recently, last week, they said Yeah, we're raking in the money. Advertising money is flowing in. There's no problem here. There's no weakness. And then all of a sudden, Eddie Q gets up here in this trial and says, you know what? Actually, Safari searches are down because people are using AI. And going forward, we probably are going to consider Safari.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
using AI services like OpenAI and Perplexity in addition to Google, which threatens Google's dominance that it's had this huge lord over this market for decades. And we're finally seeing maybe some dents in the armor.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
It is a very special day for me and everyone else who is 5'8". May 8th, 5'8", is our height day. So happy height day to all the just below average kings celebrating today, including Zac Efron, Ed Sheeran, Eminem, Robert Downey Jr., and Tom Holland.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
And that's why some analysts were theorizing that maybe Q was playing some 4D chess here by announcing that there was true competition to Google search. And, you know, they started this trial... you know, they first launched this suit many years ago before AI was even a thing. So maybe, yes, they earned $20 billion a year from this, and Apple very well knows that.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
So maybe this was him incepting into the judge's mind that, yes, Google does have competition because it would be bad for both Apple and Google.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
If you think Orlando is hot in the summer, oh boy, the misters are going to be purring in Abu Dhabi. Let's talk about this new theme park. Very strategic location for Disney. It is the largest global airline hub between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. More than 120 million passengers travel through those two places each year.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
One third of the world's population lives within a four hour flight of Abu Dhabi and then a key flight here is the flight from Mumbai to Abu Dhabi. It takes just three hours and 17 minutes. India is the world's largest population. There's a growing middle class there. And Disney is moving into these markets to create the next generation of Moana fans.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
And this terms of agreement that they have with Abu Dhabi, I mean, they are putting up zero money at all.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Toby, you ever get served an ad that just makes no sense whatsoever?
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Maybe because we keep talking about egg prices. That also proves that a lot of the time, the best B2B marketing gets served to the wrong people.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Wow. Okay. Point is, LinkedIn has a network of over 1 billion professionals and over 130 million decision makers, which makes it stand out from other ad purchases.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
So save money and target the right professionals with LinkedIn ads.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
The weather is warming up here in New York City, and the last thing I want to do is spend more time inside.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Factor makes eating well simple. With 45 weekly menu options, you can pick nutritious gourmet meals that fit your goals. Meals arrive fresh, so you can just heat them up and go.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Give me the chili roasted chicken any day of the week. Get started at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50off and use code morningbrew50 to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box. That's code morningbrew50 at factormeals.com slash morningbrew50off for 50% off plus free shipping.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will have you feeling like the Knicks and your less informed friends like the Celtics. My first number is 12 years, which is how long it's been since Netflix's homepage got a wholesale makeover.
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Fed Holds Rates Steady & Disney Opening a Theme Park in Abu Dhabi
Well, reset the clock to zero because Netflix is rolling out a brand new homepage some of you will see beginning next week as part of a campaign the company is calling The New Netflix. The New Netflix has come a long way from the old Netflix. Back in 2013, when Netflix first introduced its current homepage, it had just over 30 million subscribers, according to The New York Times.
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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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Markets Fear Recession is Near & Scientists Create Woolly Mammoth... Mice?
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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Another theory mentioned by the authors is that the graders may tend to feel stricter if they've given out a string of A's. We've all been there on an exam before where you go, that's way too many C's in a row. That's way too many B's in a row. I got to switch it up. I think graders might experience a similar thing where like, I'm being way too nice right now. I got to start toughening up.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
And you saw that too, not just in the quantitative grade, um, grades that these people are getting, but also the qualitative feedback they were giving as well. Um, for example, they found more negative and impolite comments. The later on the grading process went comments like why no answers to questions two and three, you're setting yourself up for a failing game and never do that again.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
They were literally finding that as you progress through and get a little cranky or maybe get a little bit more, uh, mean in your grading, you actually do give worse grades and also worse feedback. Now I'm just reflecting.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
At today's prices, those two pizzas are now worth $1.5 billion. $33,709,259. Never good, Neil, when your pizza order involves three commas. But yes, an absurd run-up for crypto this year, a run-up that was spurred in part by a new Trump cabinet choice, which we'll talk about a little later in the show. But first, a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
So this is a modern phenomenon that a lot, as you said, the inventification of movies has led to a rise in colons. But you also quizzed the group yesterday and said, do you guys know what the longest movie title is that has a budget of $20 million or more? And it's actually 2006's Borat, which goes Borat, colon, cultural learnings of America for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
So that was funny because that was an ironic use of the colon in 2006. But as you go through and you see the sequels, you see the rise of these events, you do see a less ironic use of colon. So it was funny to trace the lineage of Borat making a joke out of it to it becoming a real phenomenon in the entertainment industry.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
I'm embarrassed to say that I just assumed this was a thing in other airports because, yeah, I saw the recombobulation area. And you're just in an airport. You're on autopilot. So you're like, of course that's what it's called these days. But I didn't know that there was such a backstory or that Milwaukee embraced the word so much. I do love airport psychology, though.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Having a little bit of a funny joke like recombobulation does help. That discombobulation stave off for a little bit longer. One of my favorite airport psychology stories that I've told you is that operators of the Houston airport had this one route where they just received a ton of baggage wait complaints where people are saying, I have to wait so long for my baggage on this one specific route.
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And they found that it was taking people one minute to walk to the baggage claim and seven minutes waiting at the baggage claim. So what they did is just move the arrival gate so people had to walk further to get to their baggage. And just the fact that they were walking rather than standing made those complaints drop off a clip.
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So I think it's very interesting that you can tweak very small psychological things like calling it a recombobulation area and it might lead to real kind of changes in consumer psychology of airport passengers. Well, that list of 52 was just too dang good to only pick three numbers from, so you're getting a special bonus Toby's tally that I also pulled from Tom Whitwall's curated list.
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And my tally is that there are just 16 trademark scents in the United States. That sweet 16 includes smells like Crayola Crayons, Play-Doh, an ocean-scented indoor playground in Indiana, and a type of gun cleaner that smells a little bit like ammonium and gas. Neil, this number, excuse me, tally, was surprising on a few levels.
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One, I never really considered that you could trademark a scent in the first place, and two, there are not a whole lot of scent trademarks out there, and it also got me thinking, any scents that you think should be trademarkable.
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Oh, see, that's good, but I don't think those would actually pass the requirements for a scent trademark. They have to have non-functionality, so the scent must not serve a practical purpose or affect the product's
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I think I finally cracked the code as to why Yahoo Finance is such a great resource for investors.
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Quality or cost of something like Auntie Anne's I don't think you're allowed to actually do so for example perfumes you're not allowed to Actually trademark their sense since the scent is their primary function So maybe food works because I guess smell isn't its primary function But I don't know you might be up against it when it comes to trying to trademark Auntie Anne's I
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No one really knows what happens next. Parliament will probably pass a special law that will allow the government to, you know, pay its bills, keep the lights on, collect taxes in the meantime. But a lot of people are kind of looking back through history. This is the first time that a dispute has forced prime minister out since 1962.
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So people are kind of looking around the room saying like, do you know what we do now? Do you know what we do now? And there's not a lot of people in the room who do know, but hopefully the French government can figure out how to at least make it to the end of the year without a budget.
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There was a bird versus magic showdown in the GLP-1 weight loss drug category recently, and it wasn't Novo Nordisk products that came out on top. The Danish drug maker behind Ozempic took an L in the first randomized controlled clinical trial comparing its weight loss drug, Wagovi, to Eli Lilly's Zepbound.
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According to the trial results, patients who received Zepbound injections lost an average of 20.2% of their body weight over 72 weeks compared to a loss of just 13% for Wagovi. Neil, for so long, Novo Nordisk and its products, Wagovi and Ozempic, have been synonymous with this new class of drug, but it's losing out a little bit on performance.
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All right, I'm starting to think that you cracked the code as well.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
So I was talking to some baseball fanatics out there, one of which is your brother, and he said that baseball is as close to a perfect game as you can get. But that is maybe something a baseball fan Hardo would say, maybe a casual fan would be like, I do want more of those moments.
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And I was reading this athletic article that said that for 150 years, the best moments in baseball have come from these late inning at-bats that happen organically. It is the journeyman second baseman that can send you to the World Series or something like that. But if you were to step back and design the sport from scratch, wouldn't you want more of those moments, not fewer?
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And by allowing you to put your best players into those moments, it would create more of them. So, I'm not saying one way or the other which way this would go, but if you were kind of looking at it from that perspective, of course you'd want more of these moments.
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I want you to share the podcast with someone who posted their Spotify rap yesterday but didn't have Morning Brew Daily in their top five podcast. I do just want to give a shout out to everyone who did spend time with us last year. Thank you so much. It was very cool to see your Instagram stories come in. But now, help us sow the seeds for more MBD on people's raps next year.
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Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Tragedy struck in midtown New York yesterday as Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealth Group's insurance arm, was fatally shot outside a New York City hotel in what police described as a targeted attack. Videos show the suspect lying in wait, then fleeing on a gray e-bike after shooting Thompson in the back and leg.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Thompson was in town for UnitedHealth's investor meeting, and as of this morning, a manhunt is still underway for the shooter. Thompson's wife, Paulette, told NBC that there had been some threats made against her husband, saying she didn't know the details, but a lack of coverage was involved.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Thompson led UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, and the largest private health insurer in the U.S. since April 2021. After Thompson's murder, the company took down the webpages, showing headshots and bios for the rest of the company's leadership team. But Neil, a wild story affecting one of the largest health companies and largest public companies in the world.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Yeah. And just to be clear, he wasn't the CEO of United Health Group, which is the broader organization. But he was still the CEO of United Health Care, which was a big obviously one of the biggest things. If not, it is the biggest private insurer in the United States. This has also put a focus on CEO and executive safety policies at companies.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
Security filings for UnitedHealthcare's parent company don't make any mention that the company was paying for executive security for Thompson. And it's understandable that a healthcare giant wouldn't necessarily think to provide security expenses because none of its executives are as high profile as someone like Mark Zuckerberg, as someone like an Elon Musk.
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But now it probably is a good bet that a lot of these big public companies will start rethinking their strategy, rethinking their approach in the wake of this tragedy. Several companies Tech companies are already way ahead of the curve when it comes to this. I mean, for instance, security filing showed that Meta paid about $23 million on security for Mark Zuckerberg.
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So even though you wouldn't think a healthcare CEO would need a level of scrutiny and a level of security like this, I think you're going to see a bit of a wave and a bit of a shift in the strategy because of this instance.
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Then Spotify Wrapped finally dropped, but left some users a little disappointed this year. It's Thursday, December 5th. Let's ride.
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Let's start with Wall Street a little bit and then get to crypto. Atkins has been a pretty big critic of the SEC's current approach to cracking down on corporate wrongdoing or whatever you want to call it. He is actually pretty opposed to imposing these large penalties on companies that have already agreed to settle fraud chargers. And the reason why you, you know,
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or you levy these penalties against companies is that you hopefully deter them from doing wrongdoing in the future. But Atkins actually has argued in the past that they've already received penalties through a drop in their share prices, and that all you're doing is punishing shareholders further, who have already been victimized by the company before.
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So he's kind of a big proponent for not being too overbearing with the penalties that you levy against companies that engage in wrongdoing. As to the crypto side of things, this was exactly the person that the crypto crowd wanted to see, because you are right. They have been languishing under Gary Gensler, who's been very adversarial to it.
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The Trump administration has said, we're going to embrace the crypto world. Atkins has embraced the crypto world. So I do think that is part of the reason why, I mean, we teased it at the top of the show, Bitcoin kind of was inevitably pushed up over the 100K barrier because of this pick.
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was very enthusiastically embraced by the commercial space industry because they know Isaac Mann is just a huge fan of it. He puts his money where his mouth is. He has been on these space flights. One thing that is a little up in the air right now is that he signed on to fly four of these commercial space flights.
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One of the next mission was actually to fly to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to try to raise its orbit to extend its life. He's going to Superman it? Yeah, essentially push it back up because Hubble Space is struggling a little bit out there because it's just been out there for so long.
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But NASA itself says, I don't know if we really want a commercial person, a private citizen, messing with such an expensive piece of equipment. But now Isaacman might lead NASA. So everyone's like, so what happens now? Are you going to go as the head of NASA if you are approved by the Senate? Or would he kind of fall in line with what NASA has been saying previously?
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some conflicts of interest or whatever you want to call it. But for the most part, people are pretty excited by this pick because Isaacman just loves space.
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Well, it was the moment that your Instagram stories have been waiting for. Spotify rap dropped yesterday, revealing just how many of your friends went through a Pink Pilates Princess Strut pop phase this year. The answer was probably a lot of them. Artists like Chapel Roan, Sabrina Carpenter, and Charlie XCX dominated listening habits this year.
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But at the summit of Mount Spotify, there can be only one artist. And the number one most streamed artist globally in 2024 on Spotify for the second year in a row was Neil Frontenot, Taylor Swift. Turns out when you release an album with 31 songs on it, while on the second year of a massive global tour, you get a lot of Spotify streams.
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Speaking of albums, for the first time ever, the top eight albums by worldwide streams were recorded by women. Billie Eilish, Karol G, Ariana Grande, and Sabrina Carpenter, as well as SZA, All joined Taylor in the top 10. Neil, despite the cultural sway Spotify rap still holds on people, I did see some complaining a little about the perceived effort from Spotify this year.
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While 2023 gave us those viral SoundTown features, this year was a little bit lacking with that viral punch.
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We've buried the lead long enough, though, Neil. Give us your top artist from your 2024 raft.
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New Crypto-Friendly Era For the SEC? & UnitedHealthcare CEO Fatally Shot in NYC
And I do have to give you props, though. When you shared your Spotify wrapped in the Morning Brew Slack channel full of young tastemakers, they applauded your taste in music.
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Up next, I've been waiting all week for this. I know you have too. It's time for Neil's Numbers.
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Oh, absolutely. I'm retiring after this pod today, Neil. No, just kidding. Let's take a quick trip down memory lane, though. A famous part of Bitcoin's lore is something called Bitcoin Pizza Day. There was this man named Laszlo Hanyets who paid 10,000 Bitcoins for two pizzas on May 18, 2010. At the time, the transaction was worth about $41.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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
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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
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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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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.
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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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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.
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Trump's Tariff Reveal Escalates Trade War & Tesla Sales Drop 13%
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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think that's the big takeaway here is that the Madoff Victim Fund says that a lot of people incorrectly assume that the victims were these big institutions, these big pensions, or these high net worth individuals, which there were a lot of them that invested with Madoff, but a lot of the MVF victims were also these small investors, relatively small investors.
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Correct. And those losses averaged right around $250,000. So again, to some people, that is not a small victim. But again, in the grand scheme of this kind of world of high finance, that is a smaller investor. And it did wreak a lot of havoc on people's lives. And even though some of these big pensions were so-called big investors, they are including charities, including schools. So
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Obviously, I mean, you don't need me to rehash how disrupting the Madoff Ponzi scheme was, but just remember that some of these victims were relatively small level investors.
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My winner of the very long weekend is the entire stock market because its 2024 was stronger than your last drink on New Year's Eve. Despite a bit of a wobbly December that saw the S&P close down 2.5%, the Dow slide 5%, it was a dang good year for stocks. The S&P 500 finished up 23%, a strong showing right on the heels of rising 24% in 2023.
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1997. Good job. You know me so well. A combination of waning inflation, interest rate cuts, and the promise of AI sent stocks flying. However, if you missed out on a few key companies, you whiffed out on a lot of these gains. The Magnificent 7 accounted for over 50%. of the S&P 500's total gains this year, with Nvidia coming in as the top performer in the S&P 500 once again, with a nice 179% gain.
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Neil, if your portfolio ended up in the red this year, feels like you got no one to blame but yourself. Wow, that
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Separately, a few hours later, a Tesla Cybertruck filled with fuel canisters and firework mortars exploded while parked outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, killing its driver and injuring seven others.
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And if you're wondering why we're celebrating when really the last week of the year was really red, a lot of kind of analysts are looking at this and saying, all right, where do we see this next jump coming from? Can't really see it right now. Maybe take some chips off the board.
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Maybe take a little profits before the year end, which was a bummer because there's this thing called the Santa Rally, which is like post-Christmas. There is usually a little bit of bump to end the year. Instead, we got the reverse Santa Rally, a little bit of red, but 2025, 50%. Three years in a row of 20-plus gains.
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It has happened before in stock market history, but it is not... Before you were born. Well before I was born, well before Generation Beta was even conceived of. So I won't speculate as to what's happened, but it is exceedingly rare to see three-plus years of 20-plus percent.
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As of right now, authorities are treating the two as isolated incidents, but President Joe Biden said in a statement that law enforcement is investigating whether there's any possible connection with the attack in New Orleans.
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I am doing dry January. Part of it is also I have another marathon on the docket. So those two don't really go hand in hand. But you're right. A lot of this drop is led by the youth, the younger people, the share of 18 to 34 year olds who say they've never they they ever drink has fallen by 10 percentage points in the last decade. two decades, according to Pew Research.
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One thread that does connect the two is that both drivers rented their vehicles off the car rental app Turo, sort of like this Airbnb platform for sharing cars, though officials called it a, quote, coincidence. The investigation into both these incidents is ongoing and will keep you updated as more information rolls in. Now onto the business news.
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So this is clearly something driven from the youth, from the people who used to be, you know, kind of driving alcohol consumption. That has kind of started to change a little bit. Some of the beneficiaries from this has been the cannabis industry.
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As people indulge in Jai January, cannabis shop operators anecdotally say, like, they usually come in looking for, you know, a boost in edibles or those drinkable cannabis products as well. So it Definitely is a vibe shift. So obviously, 2024 was one of the biggest dry Januaries on record. Let's see if 2025 exhibits a similar growth trajectory.
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It's been interesting, Neil, though. I have seen some internet culture writers, Jules Terpak being one of them, that are saying a lot of TikTok users would actually be bummed out if it wasn't banned in the country. They're saying that deep down people want it washed from their culture. They're tired of feeling like their brain's literally rotting away.
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We spoke about brain rot in our year-end recap. People are just tired of that feeling. So there is this weird undercurrent of people saying, you know what, just get it off my phone. Give me my screen time back a little bit.
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I don't know how big of a faction that is or if it's more just an online thing, but it is interesting to see that ground level of support for the band as we kind of come up against that deadline.
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There's this joke that we got X before we got GTA 6, playing on the fact that it's been 12 years between releases. Now you will not be able to make that joke anymore, so you gotta find... a new shtick. I do think this is going to be gigantic. I mean, all the way back in 2013, Grand Theft Auto 5 did $800 million in global sales on its first day.
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I think it's going to be even bigger now because of just all that hype that we spoke about.
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That is hard to wrap my mind around. You know what? I'm just going to say it, though. I'm tired of people saying that Avatar is this empty franchise with no cultural impact. I mean, I enjoyed the last film. Way of Water was great. The first Avatar is great as well. I think this next one is great. I'm tired of pretending that I don't like Avatar. I think it's a great series.
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2025 isn't just the year where you're finally going to lock in. It also marks the dawn of humanity's newest generation, Gen Beta. Yep, while you're out there contending with lower back pain and the eggnog burps, babies born to your peers in the new year and onwards to 2039 are kicking off a brand new generational cohort.
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It's a pretty similar idea. I just want you to share the podcast with someone who's looking for a new news podcast to start the year. New year, new podcast. Seems easy enough. Let's make 2025 the MBD-est year ever.
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Great show, Danielle. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Gen Beta will be the second generation after Alpha to have never written a one or a nine in the date section of a test since they're born entirely within the 21st century, and many of the youths born within the 14-year timeframe will live to see the 22nd century. Now, obviously, it's hard to predict what's in store for this generation.
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One thing is for certain, and that is Generation Beta will be big. Mark McCrindle, the demographer who coined the name Generation Alpha, predicts that Gen Beta will make up 16% of the global population by 2035 to reach 2.1 billion members. Gen Beta also enters a world of rapid technological change.
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If Gen Alpha has been dubbed iPad kids who grew up in front of screens, Gen Beta is likely to be similarly influenced by the rise of AI in virtual worlds. Neil, it is 2025, the dawn of a new generation. What is in store for Beta?
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And they could also potentially live in a post-social media world. It's wild to think about now, but think about all of the pressure that legislators have been applying to these social media companies. TikTok could be banned in the U.S. in less than a month. In Australia, they're rolling out the first social media ban for kids under the age of 16.
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That could be replaced by these virtual worlds that we've talked about before. the Robloxes, the Minecrafts where kids hang out today. And then obviously there is this rise of AI friends and AI boyfriends and girlfriends that could replace normal social interaction. Again, this is speculation.
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We're speculating right now, but all these forces are coming to the fore as Generation Beta opens their eyes for the first time in this new world. So there is a lot of things that... Demographers look back and say the only way you can really delineate between generations is through technological change, and it becomes more clear as you progress through time.
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We'll see what actually marks the difference between Generation Beta and Generation Alpha and Gen Z, but there's clearly a lot of forces being applied to this generation.
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And looking ahead a little bit, McCrindle, who is the man behind naming Generation Alpha and Generation Beta, he says that he's going to continue using Greek letters every 15 years to mark these new generations. So all those cool generations from the past, names like the Silent Generation, Gen X, Baby Boomers, we're not going to have cool names like that. We're just going down the Greek alphabet.
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And the betas are the worst. I know, yeah, not the best. I'd rather be an alpha. A holiday dust-up over immigration has put President-elect Donald Trump in a delicate position as he tries to navigate two powerful factions within his base. The spat is centered on H-1B visas, which allow U.S. companies to hire skilled foreign workers in specific industries, particularly for tech jobs.
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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy hold the stance that H-1B visas are necessary to attract top engineering talent to the US given what is in their estimation a pretty paltry domestic supply.
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However, that pro-immigration beat clashes with members of Trump's traditional base who criticize the H-1B program for displacing American workers with cheap foreign talent and favoring corporations over American labor. To the surprise of some, Trump ended up siding with Elon and the tech faction, coming out in support of the H-1B visa program.
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So, Neil, you have these two sides of the MAGA movement fighting a sort of civil war over the legal immigration of highly skilled workers with some very influential and important industries at the center of it all.
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Then get ready to feel old. The start of 2025 also marks the dawn of Generation Beta. It's Thursday, January 2nd. Let's ride.
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Yeah, proponents of the system say that this is not meant to replace the American worker. It is just to be a stopgap. It plugs those gaps that the U.S. workforce cannot satisfy in these very specialized fields. One thing that is true, too, is that Elon Musk feels extremely passionately about this, especially, I called it like the tech faction of the MAGA movement.
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They feel very strongly about it because they think that in order to make America...
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competitive on a global scale you need to hire the best global talent as well so they're not saying this is not about uh replacing american workers is about elevating america as a whole because if you're gonna recruit the best people you need to recruit from the world not just america itself elon musk tweeted i will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend so he clearly feels very strongly about this as do others in his his camp
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Yeah, or Popeye's slasher film, as you said, at the stop. It is interesting too, because when these works hit the public domain, sometimes it's not the work that you're imagining in your head. We made a big deal last year of Mickey Mouse hitting the public domain.
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But it was actually Steamboat Willie who appeared in those animated shorts where he's whistling at the helm of a steamboat, not the white-gloved Mickey that you and I are probably – or you're probably thinking about at home. Same thing with Popeye the Sailor. Is it the Popeye that we know with the gravelly voice and – eating spinach.
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And that is a little bit up for debate because technically this is the 1929 version of Popeye. And it's not the one where he was eating spinach. Before he started eating spinach, this is a funny one. He got his superhuman strength from a weird source, the whiffle hen named Bernice. So he survived like bullet wounds by petting Bernice, this magical hen.
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It was only until later that the spinach actually got involved. So maybe it's not the Popeye that you're thinking of, but it is still the sailor with the bulging bison.
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And you mentioned that, kind of jokingly, that someone might make a Popeye slasher film. That has become a very normal thing as these beloved children kind of classics hit the public domain. People immediately jump on and make a horror movie out of it. In 2023, we saw Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey, which was this really horrible B-grade horror movie.
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We saw The Mouse Trap, which was a horror flick based off of Mickey Mouse. And then Popeye the Slayer Man will be released in 2025. There's already a trailer out for that on YouTube.
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Up next, our winners of the long weekend.
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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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Neil, listen, planted oat is just so good, flavor-packed and delicious. I finished off the brown sugar cookie oat milk creamer, and my iced coffee has never tasted so good.
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I saw so many different means of like, this is who you're trading against. And it was just Cardinals hunched over a Bloomberg terminal, but also it shouldn't really be a surprise that the Vatican has a a very sophisticated asset management operation.
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Obviously, the church brings in a lot of money and has a sizable amount of money to manage, but also banking and accounting as we know it basically emerged from Renaissance era papal banking. Papacy needed sophisticated financial networks to manage the revenue it was bringing in all the way back in the 1400s, 1500s. They were rolling in dough. They had the tithes.
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They had donations coming in from all over Europe. They had land holdings. They collected rent. So to handle this, Vatican worked with merchant banking families. I feel like we're back in history class in high school right now. like the Medici family, who essentially served as the Pope's bankers. And so a lot of the financial institutions, innovations that we rely on today were born in that time.
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Double bookkeeping entry systems, that was codified by a Franciscan friar back in 1494. So you had the need, you had people actually writing stuff down for really the first time. And so, of course, they have a lot of Bloomberg terminals. There's a direct through line to those.
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Well, any per capita questions usually lead back to all roads lead back to the smallest country.
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You know what pains me, though, is that Jack Black has all these great songs from movie lore. Like, obviously, Peaches was fine. Chicken Lava is fine. But School of Rock is a masterpiece. Like, I wish some of those songs charted. So what's the lesson here? Sing songs about lava. No, it's actually just shorter songs are getting more and more popular. I mean...
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Streaming economics, we've talked about this, how Spotify pays per stream, not per minute. So it doesn't necessarily matter exactly how long the songs are. Then you factor in just the TikTok economy and how artists are writing to try to go viral on TikTok. That compresses songs as well. You don't need to fill a CD anymore. There's no maximum amount of time an album needs to be.
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Just make sure you let me know when you finish one I plan on using. No promises there. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit plantedoat.com for more. The U.S. economy is looking a lot like my brand new jeans that I accidentally washed in hot water. It suffered some serious shrinkage in Q1 of this year. According to Commerce Department data, U.S.
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So all of these factors have compressed songs and You know, this is obviously an extreme case, but now we got a song about chicken getting doused in lava charting on the Billboard 100.
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And also, I was just digging into Monty Python lore because there's so much of it. It is so influential. There are seven asteroids named after Monty Python or its members just floating around in this space. The term spam, as in unsolicited emails, is derived from their 1970 sketch, Spam.
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The Python programming language, which underwrites a huge part of the internet, is named after the comedy troupe. It is. named after that. That's crazy. And then obviously just its influence on comedy in general, you can't overstate it. I mean, everything from SNL to South Park kind of derived its sketch formats from Monty Python. Tina Fey put it very well. She says, sketch endings are overrated.
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Their key was to do something as long as it was funny, and then just stop and do something else. And you can see so much of that influence in modern comedy today. So just, it was shocking to me going through really
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And what are these minerals that are at play here? We've talked about it a little bit before on the show, but Ukraine has an estimated of 5% of the world's critical raw materials. They have a lot of graphite. They have 19 million proven reserves of that material. key mineral, which is used in batteries for electric vehicles. They also have significant deposits of titanium lithium.
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GDP, the value of all goods and services produced across the economy, fell at a 0.3% annualized rate in the first three months of the year. That was the steepest decline since Q1 of 2022 and missed economists' expectations of a 0.4% increase. The biggest driver of the shrinkage was net exports, aka the difference between how much we import versus how much we export.
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Where it gets a little bit cloudy is when it comes to rare earth metals. That's the 17 elements that are used to produce everything from weapons to electronics to wind turbines. Those claims are a little bit disputed exactly how much of those rare earth metals they have, but Clearly, it's a priority for the U.S.
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We've talked about trying to wean off the supply chain that comes in from China, which is why this deal was kind of struck in the first place. But as they kind of go about developing those minerals, we'll see just how much Ukraine actually has.
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Speaking of gaining access to a rare resource, Bill Belichick and his 24-year-old girlfriend Jordan Hudson have made too many headlines to ignore at this point.
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The six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach, now the head honcho at North Carolina's college program, has found himself wrapped up in a whirlwind of controversies tied to Hudson, who has quickly ingrained herself in Belichick's personal and business lives and dubbed herself the chief operating officer of Belichick Productions.
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First, there was the awkward segment with CBS Sunday morning where Hudson interrupted the interview to kill a question posed to Belichick about how they first met. In a statement, Belichick said that the interjection came because he and his team wanted to keep the interview focused solely on his upcoming book.
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But then CBS fired back with a statement of their own stating that no such preconditions or limitations were established. Then The Athletic reported on Tuesday that Hudson was also instrumental in killing a UNC version of
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of HBO's Hard Knocks docuseries that was on the precipice of being announced, which caused the university to lose out on $200,000 in facility fees and a lot more money in exposure.
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So Neil, one story after another is emerging about how Hudson is exerting control over various parts of Belichick's life, leading to some questions about just how much influence the chief operating officer of Belichick Productions should have.
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Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow. 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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Imports skyrocketed in the first quarter, increasing 41% as businesses battened down their hatches and built up enough inventory to try and weather the trade war, which hurt the overall number because imports are subtracted from the calculation of GDP since they are sourced from foreign countries, aka not domestic.
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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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As for consumer spending, the engine that drives 70% of the economy, it's a little complicated. First quarter consumer spending was up just 1.8%, its smallest growth in the last two years.
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But a separate report from the Commerce Department also released yesterday showed that consumer spending grew at a brisk pace in March specifically, mainly because people were rushing to make big ticket purchases like cars before the tariffs kicked in. So Neil, it all adds up to an economic contraction.
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Yeah, you see these numbers about spending pulled forward and you think to yourself, wait, consumer spending is good. It props up the economy, right? But economists were saying that you're basically borrowing demand from the future when you do that. So even though you might have had a gangbusters march that might mean May, the best month of the year, June, July is not as gangbusters as May was.
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And so you are seeing a lot of signs of a little bit of just spookiness across the market because S&P 500, NASDAQ had their worst quarter since 2022. You look across the business world as well. Companies are basically giving up on trying to forecast what's ahead. GM pulled its 2025 profit guidance on Tuesday, citing the auto tariffs. A lot of the auto industry has followed.
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Delta has pulled its guidance, as we've spoken about, as did a lot of the airline industry. And yeah, consumers are spooked, too. That accelerating of purchases is kind of trying to get ahead of those increased costs, which caused vehicle sales to jump in March. So spend, baby, spend. But it comes with a price later down the road.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And we haven't said the I word yet, inflation. The Fed's favorite inflation tractor, which is the PCI index, rose 3.6% in the last quarter compared to 2.4% the quarter before. Technically, it's actually not as bad as that sounds because in March it only jumped 2.3% compared to the same month last year. But now the Fed has this very difficult task ahead of them because they meet next week.
Morning Brew Daily
US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Right now you're seeing a little bit of cracks in the job market as well. The private payroll report from ADP came in a lot lower than expected. They added just 62,000 jobs last month. That's the smallest gain since July. Missed expectations by a wide margin. So now you have some cracks forming in the job market. You also have inflation remaining a little bit higher or so.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Then, honey, I shrunk the economy. U.S. GDP contracted in the first quarter of the year. It's Thursday, May 1st. Let's ride.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
They're still in that rock and a hard place where Jerome Powell says we need to see some progress on that inflation front to make any moves with rates. So another tough decision lays ahead.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Let's talk about Meta first because you are right. Zuck is not holding back when it comes to these capital expenditures. If Meta spent at the upper level of its new production, its capital outlays would be 84% above what it spent last year. So it's also going to be very close to what
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Google is spending this year and Google brings in a lot more money a lot more revenue than meta does so it's probably the right call though because both Zuck and its medicine CFO Susan Lee got into the very nitty-gritty of how meta is already using AI across their business They're using LLMs to refine decisions about what content they show to users they said that they incorporated into threads the micro blogging app that competes with X and
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
and they've already seen people spend more time on the app because of that. Also, the thing that people really want to hear is that it's improving the ads that it shows, because 98% of Meta's revenue comes from its ads business. And so, if you can boost ad revenue, that is music to investors' ears.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
So, measured over the long term, which is what CEOs do and what Zuck is doing here, it's probably making the right call about boosting its AI spend in the near term.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And then just one final note on Microsoft. Microsoft's kind of been laboring over the last 12 months. Its stock is only up 2%. Finally, though, investors are happy to see that it's just core businesses. The cloud division was growing and that their work division that encompasses Microsoft 365 products had solid revenue. So it was just kind of like a return to form for Microsoft for investors.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And then we got more big tech news coming down the pipeline because Apple and Amazon are posting their earnings today. And then also, That gives us a better look into the physical hardware portion of big tech. This was more not so much the physical products. Starbucks' turnaround is looking like a tall order. Not tall like the size of a Starbucks order. That is small, but tall like actually tall.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Whatever, you guys get it. The coffee chain stock dropped nearly 6% yesterday after reported second quarter earnings that disappointed, leading to some question marks about Hot Shot CEO Brian Nichols' turnaround plan. Average ticket size actually rose 3% in the US, but total transactions fell 4% as tumbling foot traffic offset any gains that came from people loading up their drink trays.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
In China, another important and struggling market, it was the opposite. More customers visited Starbucks, but they spent less money, which led to sales as flat as a flat white, which honestly is a win for Starbucks given the previous four quarters of sales declines and intense competition it is facing over there.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Also waiting on Starbucks is coffee bean prices, which hit a 50-year high in the quarter due to weather-related shortages. Despite all of that, execs are confident that their turnaround plan can work. Nickel is trying to speed up order times, hire a lot more baristas, and introduce more seating to cafes.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
Nickel's only been at the helm since September, Neil, but investors may already be growing a little antsy.
Morning Brew Daily
US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And we were laughing because you found two headlines back-to-back yesterday, one from the Wall Street Journal that said, Starbucks' new technology can cut in-store wait times by up to two minutes. And then this other headline from The Guardian said, Starbucks says cutting shop staff in favor of automation has failed, which on the surface seemed like two totally different things.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And Nickel did say, over the last couple of years, I think we had the hope that equipment could offset the removal of labor, which we were finding out that wasn't an accurate assumption when that played out. But then it is also piloting this new technology in its stores that it has shaved off minutes from the time it takes to make beverages.
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
I think you forgot the best part, though, Neil. You can say the Justin Timberlake line, It's gonna be May. That's my favorite part. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, I was in the morning brew kitchen yesterday, and I have to tell you, I had to throw some bows to get some Planet Oat.
Morning Brew Daily
US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
A lot of that is actually this algorithmic thing that says which orders you make at which time. Instead of just doing first come, first serve basis, this new algorithm anticipates how long a mobile order will take to pick up. And so it's just refining the edges of that and causing wait times to fall. And then the final aspect of Starbucks we have to talk about is how is it faring tariffs?
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US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And Starbucks actually is relatively tariff resistant because, one, only 15% of Starbucks' cost of goods comes from actually buying coffee itself, which seems low. We were remarking earlier that that seems like a pretty low amount. So it doesn't have that much input cost.
Morning Brew Daily
US Economy Shrinks 0.3% & Starbucks’ Turnaround Plan Gets Bumpy
And those beans come in from mostly Latin American countries, which are seeing slightly lower tariffs than something like a company who sources primarily from Asia. So oddly enough, it is seemed rather tariff resistant, at least when it comes to importing goods that they need to make, you know, and sell their products. Up next, we got Neil's numbers.
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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'
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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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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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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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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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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
From Fridgescaping to Mudang and everything in between, this is the Toby's Trend Show. It's Monday, December 30th. Let's ride. Man, I am really excited for you all to hear this show. We go through so many Toby's trends in a year, but some are just flash-in-the-pan things. Remember our queen, Mu Dang, the pygmy hippo.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I see what you did there. People were actually mad about this, though, because they're saying like taking dairy products out of their sealed containers and putting them into different containers like messes up the pasteurization. So that one was probably valuing aesthetics over, you know, actual practicality there. But that was a big trend of moving more life indoors.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
One business idea that emerged out of this rise in loneliness, too, is the emergence of AI products being built to address loneliness. We talked about one company, Friend.com, who is designing this wearable pendant that listens to you throughout the day and is always there to just chat.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
It's meant to keep you company, not make you more productive, because we are seeing tons of Google search interest already in AI girlfriends and AI boyfriends. People are more isolated than ever, so having someone to talk to that understands you because it's been listening, there's probably a big market out there for a device like this and others.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Right. Friend AI created a pendant that you interact with in the real world. But I do think that even just chatbots on your computer will be something that we will be monitoring going forward this year and the next year to come. And then finally, that is some of the best trends of the year that I remember. But Neil, I want to turn it over to you a little bit.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
What were one or two trends that stood out to you as some of your favorites?
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Well, I think you're talking about two separate things there because one, the Apple ad was talking about crushing creativity. And then the Coca-Cola one was actually built using AI. But I think you are right. Google had another ad where it was talking, a dad was helping. Oh, the Olympics one. The Olympics.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
one, their daughter write a letter to her favorite athlete and he was using like Gemini AI to enable that. So there was this big clash between like human emotion and AI tools as well as like that actual, the Coca-Cola ad was a more recent thing where it looked like the uncanny valley because it was generated using AI. So I think you're definitely right. That is a trend we'll look at going forward.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
What's fascinating, too, about that is that Sabrina Carpenter and Charlie XCX had been around for a long time. They dropped multiple albums, but this year, for whatever reason, I think it could have been the nostalgia. Like, you might have just explained it very well there that people like that it evoked a time in the past. And then, I don't know, Chapel Rowan's just, like, incredible.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
So, like, of course... She was just going to do well no matter what. But yeah, that's a good one. I think that maybe we'll get a new crop next year and we'll be talking about a new crop of pop stars in 2025.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
The final trend that I just liked that I couldn't fit into any bigger, wider explanation was, remember raw dogging flights where people, mostly guys, would just go on seven-hour, eight-hour, nine-hour flights and just look at the seat in front of them or look at the flight map in front of them That didn't speak to anything, but I just remember that was very fun.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I thought about trying it on a recent long flight I had. I made it like 10 minutes.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Well, I didn't fully commit myself to it, but I tried. And then what started happening, I was sitting next to the bathroom. People kept going by me, kept... Breaking my conversation, I got tired. So I don't know if people were just lying about that on social media, but it definitely was a thing that guys were like, let's just work on this. We're going to go inwards in our thoughts.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
So not really speaks to anything bigger, but that was one of my feelings.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I don't think so. I think you've got to shut it.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
You're not allowed to go to the bathroom.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Just you versus you.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Right. I do want to drill into the marijuana portion, though, too, because when we did that Toby's Friends all the way back in January, we were like, oh, wow, the amount of teenagers that are smoking weed versus, you know, drinking alcohol is a lot higher. Not teenagers, but 18 to 25 age group was a lot higher over the past year.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
But then recently there's been a little bit of a stop in the legalized weed movement on the state level because Florida voted low on know to legalize weed this year. So maybe the weed industry will run into a little bit more headwinds than we're expecting.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
But I am curious to see if that Google trend data starts to go up again as we move into this next iteration of dry January and we just do this whole trend all over again.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
My next trend that is slightly related to the one above because it might involve some wine was the rise of romantic novels. This was the year that some steamy, sultry fantasy novels with dragons and fairies, oh my, dominated book sales. Series like The Fourth Wing from Rebecca Yarrow and A Court of Rose and Thorns by Sarah J. Moss sold like hotcakes.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Sales in the romantic book category rose 45% last year to nearly 20 million copies in even as the overall U.S. book sales fell 2.6%. Just to put that 20 million copy number into perspective, Neil, James Patterson, Stephen King, and John Grisham only sold 6 million print books in 2023. So the book industry was just completely overtaken by romanticist books this year.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
But some have a more lasting impact on the year, and it's those trends that Neil and I are going to talk about today.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
It got so big that I was like, I'm doing a disservice to our audience if I don't go and read these books. That's the rationale. So I read Fourth Wing, and it was just as steamy, dragon-y as people said. And then I read A Court of Rose and Thorns as well. Also very good. I mean, these books do draw you in and you I ended up reading them in literally like 24 hours.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
So it is one of those things that you can just flip through. It's a page turner. You just want to get on to the next one in this series. So I was fully wrapped up in this trend this year. You not so much, but I have the book.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I think it's only going to get even bigger because this was really the year that book talk exploded. I mean, I don't know if this was the first year it happened, but it really 20 million romance novels being sold compared to those other like A-list authors. It truly is the book industry at this point. So I think it's only going to snowball from here.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Now let's head to the fashion world where nostalgia was the trend du jour. One brand I want to highlight again is Asics. Asics is a 75-year-old Japanese running shoe company, but its stock price has quadrupled over the past two years as it's ridden this wave of popularity in both running and fashion circles.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
First, it capitalized on the pandemic running boom quite well, but it's also seeing success on the backs of its ugly dad sneakers. Some of its more classic silhouettes, like the Gel Kayano, have become fashionable as the quote-unquote ugly shoe wave continues to rip. As Nike has stumbled this year, Neil, Asics has done very well, and part of that is this return towards nostalgic silhouettes.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I mean, just walking around New York City, you can see it happening in front of your eyes. I mean, I go to the gym. I look people in the eye, Toby. I don't look at their face. I go straight to the sneakers. What's ironic about this trend, though, this return to nostalgia, is that Nike, its stock had a very bad year, down about 25% as the time that we are recording this.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Part of the reason that it had such a bad year is that it relied too heavily on its fans. nostalgic silhouettes like the Nike Dunks, like Jordan, and it didn't innovate enough. So it is one of those things where you can get too far sucked down the nostalgia rabbit hole. But I will say Asics isn't all nostalgia. It also has this very forward-looking running shoe division.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Their running products are as comparable, if not better, than anyone else in the game right now. So I do think it is navigating the tightrope of let's remember our heritage, but also let's look forward into the future with our running tech as well. But on this topic of nostalgia, another fun trend in fashion was the emergence of the mob wife aesthetic.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
You're right, Neil. As I was looking back through each week, I noticed a lot of these topics ladder up into bigger trends. It's like a Russian nesting dolls of Toby's trends. So let's have a little fun to end the year and dive on in. Figured the best way to kick things off is to go all the way back to the beginning of the year to talk about the rise of dry January.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
This was mostly a TikTok thing that involved serving up looks that have big fur coats, lots of leather animal prints that don't really match, big hair, and, of course, stacks of gold jewelry. Just think Sopranos because that's pretty much exactly what it was inspired by. This year was the 25th anniversary of the show. And even though this wasn't one of the longer trends of the year—
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
What this really shows is the circular nature of some of these fashion trends.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Right. I think what I do want to just call out about this is that it can take just such a small trigger to just make something erupt into the, I mean, call it mainstream culture just for a little bit. And I think that trigger was obviously the Sopranos 25th anniversary. I also do want to nail down the fact that this trend was not just about what you were wearing either. A lot of it was about
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
how you carry yourself, just the confidence that you carry yourself with. I think you taught me the word chutzpah at that point when we were talking about it earlier this year. So it was just one of those things that TikTok sent into the ether. It calmed back down a little bit, but I think it does speak to this trend of nostalgia that we are talking about.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
And then another trend that goes hand-in-hand with both the return of nostalgia and the rise of this mob wife aesthetic is how big vintage shopping was this year. Business has been so good in the vintage shopping game. There are over 25,000 resale stores now in the U.S., and secondhand apparel sales were up 11% last year. Apparel resale in the U.S.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
grew at seven times the rate of the broader retail sector to reach $43 billion just six years ago, sitting at about half of that. So vintage is clearly in these days.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
And when we spoke about this trend earlier this year, what we said was that downtowns love resale stores because brick and mortar is still just their bread and butter. Brick and mortar is their bread and butter because, yes, you can go on RealReal. Yes, you can go on Depop.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
But nothing recreates the experience of going into a vintage store, trying all the things because they're all idiosyncratic things. You don't know how things are going to fit. So they've been propping up some downtowns because they are really one of the only tenants that still need brick and mortar retail space.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Two trends stood out to me here. One, people are drinking less. Sales at three of the largest U.S. liquor stores hit a post-pandemic low during the first months of the year. Meanwhile, Google searches for dry January reached an all-time high, doubling from a year ago.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
It could be that we're podcasters now and it's not like vintage really popped up, but fashion is cyclical. I think that's the biggest takeaway from this entire category is that maybe vintage will start calming down again. We will be looking forward to new styles going forward, but
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Maybe it's because we got a mic in front of us, but I do think that there is something here, specifically in 2024, in the air that people wanted to look back in history. Okay, final note on fashion trends. Remember the sock war between millennials and Gen Z? Oh, yeah. I'm going to put you on the spot.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
See, you do look at people's ankles, Neil, because you started— I look at mine. You look at your own ankles. Yeah, I— realize that I, cause I'm right on the cusp of Gen Z and millennial. And I kind of realized I wear mid level socks. Like they are not exactly ankle socks. They're not the no show socks, but they're also not like the high, you know, tube socks.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
So I think that perfectly encapsulates where I sit, which is straddling generations. We're going to take a quick break, but more Toby's trends coming up next. Okay, another macro trend I want to talk about is loneliness. Starting with eating alone. In the U.S., solo dining reservations are up nearly 30% over the last two years, according to OpenTable.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
And a survey of 2,000 diners found that 60% of Gen Z and millennial respondents have dined solo dolo at least once in the past year. You know, dining alone went from being something that was almost scoffed at and used as a punchline in a lot of movies to now being totally normal.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
But what also stood out to me about dry January is that marijuana sales spiked during the month, as the alcohol industry's loss was the cannabis industry's gain. So Neil, it wasn't just a dry January this year. It was also a high January.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I think it is emblematic. And remember, restaurants started leaning into this trend too because they're like, all right, we have all these reservations for one coming through the door. How can we cater to them? And they started offering more bar seating instead of table seating. They started offering more tasting menus for people coming in. alone.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I think a big part of it too is the rise of fast casual chains. Kava, Sweetgreen, Chipotle. These are places where it's very normal to go at lunchtime, grab a bowl, sit and eat by yourself. I mean, I do that all the time because it is just a brief respite in your busy day. So
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
I think you can go as deep into it like maybe people are lonely or maybe people are just being more convenient and really engaging with these fast casual chains. But another, also on this topic of loneliness, that was another trend we did where we covered America turning into a nation of homebodies.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Even coming out of the pandemic, census data shows that Americans are spending more time at home than ever before. The American Time Use Survey showed that time spent at home increased by an hour and 39 minutes a day from 2003 to 2022.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Obviously, a rise in work from home contributed to those numbers, but also things like education, eating and drinking, and religious activities have moved into the house. Largest shift actually did come from religious activities. 59% occurred at home in 2022, up from just 24% in 2003. So we really did move a lot of our lives indoors.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Make this face look good. Again, this is another trend that it reminded me of. A trend within a trend of moving things into home was fridge scaping. Remember, people started decorating their refrigerators in these aesthetic ways and then posting them on Instagram.
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Toby’s Trends of 2024: Dry January, Ankle Socks, Solo Dining and More
Think colored Tupperware tops, label-free mason jars, even some non-edible elements like flowers would bring themes out like they were dressing them up as The Hobbit or Bridgerton. So that was certainly born of spending more time in the house as well.
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My winner of the weekend is sports betting parlays. No, not because I hit on a big multi-leg bet this weekend, but because they are fast becoming Sportsbooks' chief moneymaker. Parlays accounted for 27% of of all sports betting in Illinois, New Jersey, and Colorado last year, up from 22% in 2021.
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These types of bets are popular with sports fans because they represent the tantalizing opportunity to turn small wagers into big winnings, thanks to long odds that arise when you link multiple bets together. And sportsbooks love them because they get a bigger cut from parlays than single bets. Parlays contributed about 56% of sports betting revenue last
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after payouts in those same states during those same periods. Gambling companies are also relying on them to bring in more casual newcomers into the sports betting world. Instead of dropping $5 on a Chiefs Super Bowl win, customers who bet small are increasingly favoring parlays. FanDuel said that 90% of its same game parlay have bets of $30 or less, while over half are $5 or less.
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Neil Tawson, a mass of influencers big and small, putting their names and follower accounts behind pushing parlays, and you have a potent money-making machine for gambling sites.
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My favorite Yahoo Finance feature is this subtle design decision where they show how a stock is trading if it is mentioned in a headline. For instance, take the headline, Wall Street bets Tesla's 2025 sales will miss Elon Musk's target. Just below that headline, you can see how Tesla is doing in pre-market trading. It's down 1.4%.
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Yeah, I think that's the big point here is that they're very aspirational. I mean, you can call them lottery tickets because what happens when you kind of piece this parlay together, you see the odds just go up and you see the potential winnings. And in your mind, you're like, oh, that's what I'm staying to win. But it's really what you're standing to lose here because these are pretty small odds.
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The more bets you link together, the higher those odds become. So you can see why DraftKings, why FanDuel are kind of putting a ton of money marketing spend behind it. DraftKings is actually also testing a subscription service out that would give customers access to better parlay odds.
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So they're just figuring out different ways to come up with narratives that push parlays, different ways to offer customers better odds with those parlays because all it is is just this big attention grabber in the sports betting industry and a big moneymaker.
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This $1.50 hot dog price is holy. It is the most important marketing tool Costco has. It's just become very synonymous with... the Costco brand. I mean, you already introduced the concept of a loss leader earlier in the A section of our show. Costco loses money on this deal. Let's be honest here. They cannot actually sell a hot dog and a Coke for $1.50.
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And that's just a single headline, a full scan of Yahoo Finance's homepage, and you'll learn all the storylines that are driving the market for the day.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
But because it brings people through the door, it gets them shopping on other things where they do make a profit on, they do continue to offer this deal. And yeah, so... Part of me thinks that this announcement is just to get that hot dog deal back in the news again.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
Costco has been facing some backlash on its DEI policy, so announcing that Coke is coming in instead of Pepsi is just another way to get that headline reading about the $1.50 deal. But I think people are...
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excited because coke classic is a larger share of the market pepsi's market share has been slowly falling since its peak in 1995 it used to be 15 of the u.s carbonated soft drink market it's now right around eight percent so maybe it is something that is saving money maybe it is just something that they're like oh more people like coke let's go back to coke but i think people are happy in general
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If you want to check out my favorite feature, head to yahoofinance.com and start perusing. That's yahoofinance.com. American AI dominance is under serious threat after a Chinese company dropped a powerful new model that can go toe-to-toe with the very best open AI has to offer, but at a fraction of the cost.
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Yeah, I think that's going to be the exciting part. How is he going to navigate this relationship that he once again has with President Trump? If this is the first meeting, which it likely will be, that they don't raise interest rates, I don't think Donald Trump is going to like that. So it's going to be a little bit of drama coming out, even though this is just a kind of standard Fed meeting.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
My hot take is I'm looking at Starbucks' earnings report to figure out how its turnaround is going under new CEO Brian Nicol. They just released their first kind of national ad campaign that showed baristas writing names in Sharpies on customers' cups. They've been really trying to focus on this return to that coffeehouse feel. I'm curious to see how that focus is translating into results.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
And major implications related to another story we talked about today. Remember, Kennedy would oversee the CDC, which would be in charge of kind of managing the bird flu and make sure it doesn't translate to humans. So that's just another thing that would be under his purveying control should he be confirmed.
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Yeah, so it's the Chinese zodiac calendar. It's a 12-year cycle represented by 12 different animals. So year of 2025 will be snakes. In Chinese culture, snakes are considered symbols of harvest, procreation, spirituality, and good fortune. But they're also considered symbols of cunning, evil, threat, and terror. terror.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
And then again, Chinese cosmology each year is also associated with one of five elements, gold, wood, water, fire, and earth, which create this six year cycle. So this is the year of the wood snake. So what specifically is the wood snake? That is a charming, intelligent, and creative, but also secretive, cunning, sometimes ruthless.
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DeepSeek is a relatively unknown AI research lab from China that dropped an open-source model last week that flipped the AI industry on its head. According to a paper from the company, its top-of-the-line R1 model matches or beats competitors like OpenAI's O1 on most math and reasoning benchmarks.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
So 2025 babies, I don't know if you can trust them, but I think they do have some of that je ne sais quoi.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
That was pretty good, Neil. But I want you to share the pod with all these snakes in your life. All those creative and charming, but also cunning and ruthless friends. We all have them. It's their year. So send them this show.
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The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
But it's not just DeepSeq's performance that has the US spooked, it's the fact that it was able to develop such a model in the face of US export controls that severely limit the amount of chips Chinese companies can buy.
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Given the restraints, Chinese research labs like DeepSeek have been forced to do more with less and thus found a way to train their models much more efficiently using limited compute they have available. But here's the real kicker. R1 is open source and free to use, which will seriously hurt subscriber-only models like OpenAI's $200 a month ChatGPT Pro subscription.
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Neil, Scale AI CEO Alexander Wang, one of the more notable founders in the industry, put it best. He called the models coming out of DeepSeek earth shattering.
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And I do just want to give some context on who is DeepSeek? Where did DeepSeek even come from? It has a very unconventional story. It actually started out as an AI model that was built for a Chinese quant hedge fund. They were literally building it as a side project. The CEO, the founder of the hedge fund was like, I was just curious about AI.
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Obviously, it was helping with the trading aspect, but they were taking the funds and the profits they were making from the hedge fund and putting it into this AI side research project. But because the AI, or just because the US has these pretty strict export controls about the amount of high-end NVIDIA chips that can go over to China, they were working with
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basically a tenth of the compute power that someone like a meta or someone like an open AI is working with. So those constraints kind of built or forced DeepSeek to come up with way more efficient methods to train its models. They didn't necessarily come up with a brand new method. They just combined a bunch of different ones together and it led to these greater efficiency gains.
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So now this is out in the open. It is open source. So other companies can start copying their approach, which will lead to efficiency gains, which could topple NVIDIA from being one of the most valuable companies because if you need less of their chips, then maybe NVIDIA is a little bit overvalued right now.
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Then Trump threatened the first trade war of his presidency, but not against the country you'd expect. It's Monday, January 27th. Let's ride.
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So there's a lot of second-order, third-order effects that come from DeepSeq releasing this model.
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The one, I mean, you can call it cope. I'm going to use the word cope that I was seeing from around the industry is that in economics, there's this thing called Javon's paradox, which occurs when tech progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used. So think about maybe back, this was coined back in 1865. It was about coal power plants becoming a lot more efficient.
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And the government thought like, oh, coal power plants are much more efficient. That means we're going to need less coal. The exact opposite happens when efficiency gains are reached. Actually, more of that resource ends up being used. So that is what I've been kind of seeing from some tech leaders is like, hey, this is not Armageddon.
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What's actually going to happen is we're going to even see more demand for AI chips because of these efficiency gains. So there's a couple of ways to look at it. You can look at it that it is going to be a bloodbath that will wipe out NVIDIA's dominance or NVIDIA's NVIDIA could just become more entrenched than ever due to these efficiencies.
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Let's stay on the topic of geopolitical tension. Trump issued a barrage of tariffs over the weekend, but not at a country you'd expect like Mexico or China. Instead, it was Colombia, a longtime U.S. ally in Latin America, that was in Trump's crosshairs.
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On Sunday, President Trump said he would impose tariffs and sanctions against Colombia after its president, Gustavo Petro, refused to accept two U.S. flights carrying deported migrants. As a result, the president said he would slap a 25% tariff on all Colombian imports, which include commodities like crude oil and coffee, promising to raise them again to 50% in one week.
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If the tariffs weren't enough, Trump also said he would fully impose financial sanctions against Colombia, tossing in a travel ban for good measure. By the end of the day, though, Colombia had given in to Trump's demands, averting a costly trade war. But the show of force was likely meant to dissuade other countries from getting similar ideas.
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Quote, it sends a powerful message to the world that not even old political allies are safe if they do not cooperate, Bloomberg wrote. Neil, this is the first, but certainly not the last time that we will see Trump using economic pressure to force a country to bend to an American first policy.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
And on the flip side, the U.S. imports about $16 billion of goods from Colombia in 2023. That ranked 26th on our list of import partners. So it's not like it's going to really affect too much in the U.S. economy if we lose Colombia as a partner. Maybe coffee. Except for coffee. Coffee is one of those big commodities. It makes up about a quarter of U.S. coffee imports.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
So, Starbucks CEO Brian Nichols is probably looking at this going, are you kidding me right now? Colombia, of all places. But I think it does show you are right. That even though there is not a ton of policy overlap between immigration policy and... economic and trade policies, Trump is planning to use them both in tandem to get what he wants.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
So I said it was the first time that we saw him doing this. We're only two weeks into his presidency, but it likely will not be the last.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
Neil, I am not afraid to say it. The Chiefs are the most unlikable team in NFL history. You got the refs blatantly stealing games from them. You got Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey flopping left and right. You have the fact that they are so good and they won't stop winning games. So, needless to say, I am going to start pronouncing it Wooter, frequenting Wawa's. Yeah,
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
I mean, eggs are the poster child of what people have been struggling with and hate about the elevated prices we've been seeing over the last few years. One of the reasons is you buy them very regularly, so you're actually pretty familiar with their price point, and you can tell when they go up or down.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
Their ingredients in a lot of food, I mean, bakers out there use them, breakfast lovers out there use them. They are just one of the more ubiquitous ingredients. And then you're right. There's been this kind of rise in healthier eating and protein kicks and eggs are this supposedly affordable source of protein, except they're not so affordable anymore.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
The problem with this bird flu epidemic is that you have to cull basically an entire flock if one chicken, if one bird is infected, because that's how infective this disease is, that it can take down an entire flock. So you are seeing just these Really large culling events where they're killing these birds because of single infections, which is just devastating the supply side of the industry.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
and getting a Saquon back tattoo because let's go, birds. You are our only hope. I love what I hear, Toby. Go off. Go off and go, birds. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, permission to tell everyone listening about my favorite Yahoo Finance feature. Permission granted, Toby. Well, this is an ad for Yahoo Finance. Thank you, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
Easter, which is a quite egg-heavy holiday, so it doesn't look like there's going to be a loss in demand any time soon. Up next, it is time for our winners of the weekend. We know our listeners are above average.
Morning Brew Daily
The Chinese AI Startup Rivaling OpenAI & Trump Fires Tariffs at Colombia?
Interest is compounded daily, helping you grow your money fast. Plus, as a division of MidFirst Bank, it's FDIC insured up to $250,000 and there are no monthly fees.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Still, confronting this idea of focusing more on your personal finance is a daunting task for a lot of people. And one of the things that you'd say people experience is that you say, oh, I know I should budget or I know I should save, but I don't know how much to save. I don't know how much to budget. But then a lot of things started to crystallize around this idea of the 4% safe withdrawal rate.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
And I'm sure a lot of people do have that abstract sense of the importance of saving. But how can that 4% rule really crystallize and guide their financial habits.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
It's out on June 10th and makes for a perfect beach read. Neil and I both read it and man, am I fired up to reap the benefits of compound interest.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
It's very cool that you have written this book. It's not often we get to talk to an author who just put two years of her life into making this thing a reality. So we wanted to ask you some questions about just the process that goes into creating this amazing book that you have. Is there something that you changed your mind about as you were going through the process of writing the book?
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Because it's a long time, like two years is a long period of time. Is there something that you started with like, oh, this is definitely going in that you maybe changed throughout the writing process?
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Don't I ever throw a massive orchestra behind a guy tying his shoes and suddenly it's a heroic journey. There's a reason why my top genre on Spotify last year was actually
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
And I did end up on the renting side of the equation after we spoke a little bit. Yeah. Cause I mean, it is, it does come down to numbers at the end of the day is like, what does make more sense for you financially? So I'm sad it didn't make us in, but also another plug to go listen to our previous conversation with you because we did hit that topic.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
I feel like I'm an irresponsible reader where I kind of don't always look at the footnotes the first go around. So knowing the labor of love, though, that you put into it, I'll go back.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
I am trusting you.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
And I will say, if you like the way Katie sounds and you enjoy listening to these episodes, reading your book, I heard you and I could just feel your voice coming through on that. So even if you don't opt for the audio book, you write with your voice in mind. And that was just very clear. So either medium that you choose to consume it in, you will hear Katie in it.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Oh, that is a good answer. We thought maybe you were going to toss a Warren Buffett out there, but Gloria Steinem is pretty solid. He's not a rich girl.
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Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
And it's not just taste, you're getting calcium, vitamins A and D plus. They have an unsweetened version that has zero grams of sugar and still tastes great.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Very cool. Katie, thank you again for jumping on. I always leave our episodes we record together feeling smarter and ready to reap the rewards of compound investing. If you guys enjoyed this conversation, make sure you pre-order Katie's book, Rich Girl Nation, at moneywithkatie.com slash richgirlnation. It is out on June 10th. Katie, until next time.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Yep, according to SHRM, you're juggling on average 16 or more platforms. Think hiring, onboarding, training, performance, and compensation.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Clear Company is a full-spectrum HR platform designed to support the entire employee lifecycle. No more endless tabs, no more disconnected tools, and no more reporting headaches.
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Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more. And now, more with Katie.
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Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Millions of users and job seekers already trust Clear Company. So whether you're scaling an empire or need to upgrade your HR playbook, visit clearcompany.com to elevate your talent management. That's clearcompany.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Yeah. I mean, look at the beautiful book in front of us now. It's behind you on the wall. You're on your Rich Girl Nation book tour. But I did want to ask why Rich Girl Nation and why not Rich People Nation? What's behind your drive to write a personal finance book specifically for a female audience instead of a more broader audience?
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
We spoke with Katie Gaditassin, aka Money With Katie, about her new book on achieving financial freedom. It's Monday, May 26th, Memorial Day. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
I'm still on the hamster wheel. This is all Katie.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
And I do remember reading that first chapter and one stat that just absolutely blew my mind was approximately half of the women serving as CEOs for S&P 500 companies have blonde hair. How does blonde hair specifically play into this idea of the hot girl hamster wheel?
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Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
I'm guilty.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Public combines a wide range of asset classes with the tools you need to build and manage your wealth, whether it's with stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more. And you can diversify your investments while generating fixed income with a suite of yield accounts. That includes Public's high yield cash account with an industry leading 4.1% APY and its bond account at a 6% or higher yield.
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Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Fund your account in minutes or less and earn up to $10,000 when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Get started at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases. There are no points to calculate, no limits or deadlines. Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
If that sounds like the kind of simplicity you want in a credit card, apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Brands. Terms and more at applecard.com. Shifting gears a little bit from the hamster wheel, you've also talked about this feeling of being a corporate cog in your early career.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
So maybe to anyone else listening who is early in their career, maybe first or second job out of college who are dutifully reporting day in, day out, but are looking around and saying like, damn, is this it? Is this really the rest of my life? Give them maybe some soothing or some not so soothing words about how to confront or maybe quell some of their anxiety.
Morning Brew Daily
Money with Katie Chats Financial Freedom & New Book "Rich Girl Nation"
Katie explains what the 4% safe withdrawal rule is, how hard it is to write a book, what the heck the hot girl hamster wheel is, and how to get off of it.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
I got seven of my elite eights.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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 –
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
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'
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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.
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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...
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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
Morning Brew Daily
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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
AppleTV+ is Losing $1B/Yr & Boeing Banks Big Defense Deal
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?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Oh, you know, probably play a little golf, go out to dinner with my girlfriend. The usual. Keep it low key.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
There's always this dissonance when you see things pop up in places that they shouldn't be. Same goes for ads.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Some players really like their beards and... And things like that can factor into the calculus that goes along with deciding where to play.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Why are we even talking about it in the first place?
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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,
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
That lack of confidence coupled with a hot inflation report may present a dangerous concoction for investors and consumers alike.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
That was intentional. Everything we do here is intentional.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Toby Howell.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
Today, federal employees are scrambling after an email over the weekend asked them to show their work.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
We're still fine with the cash position that we're sitting in right now.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
A big shakeup in the GLP-1 drug industry here, Anne.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Staffers Must Justify Jobs or Be Fired? & Ozempic Shortage is Over
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
I think some Silicon Valley people and some founders just cringed at the fact that Neil said, best way to get ahead in these emerging fields is to go get an MBA in it. No, the best way is probably to go and actually work in the field, go do research in it and stuff like that. I definitely do think.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
If you can.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Neil, the way I got the job is by literally saying, hey, give me the job, not credentialing it that way.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
All right, let's take a quick break. All right, they say good artists copy, but great artists steal. So to finish off this episode, we're going to steal a segment that you guys do on your show called Am I the A-Hole?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Like you, we asked our listeners to submit some instances where they've butted heads with a coworker or beefed with a boss with the hopes that you guys can help them choose who the A-Hole is in the situation. We changed the names from some of these submissions to help protect anonymity, but are you guys ready to dive in? And we have not heard these ahead of time.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
So these are live reactions off the cuff. This one is from Brooke. I was once in a meeting with all men when one of them started to curse, but then stopped himself and said, sorry, I shouldn't curse when there's a girl in the room. Is he an a-hole or is he just being considerate?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
I think that is probably true. A lot of the women I know swear more than I do.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Is this one of those tough love scenarios though where if you don't get it in writing, then it wasn't actually an offer? Like is Brooke here just being naive in this case?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
It is so wild how this all feels like relationship vice. If you just flip some words around, company instead of company, you do like girlfriend or boyfriend. So this is very helpful for a lot of people in that sense.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Basically you already have. All right. Our final question from our audience is how can I gracefully handle being promoted from within? I am newer to the team and younger than my colleagues and I'll be their manager starting next week. The transition feels difficult to navigate as I want to maintain existing friendships while also taking our team in a new direction.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
So not really a, am I the a whole scenario here? Just some advice on how to deal with a promotion into a team full of her friends.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Is it a scenario though, where you have to kind of put your manager hat on and then take it off and then put your friendship hat on and take it off? Or should you try to maintain kind of a consistent persona throughout the friendships and throughout the work environment? Or should you be kind of code switching here and there?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
And maybe a little relationship advice along the way.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Great show today, everyone. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
I do also want to talk about the Department of Government Efficiency, aka DOGE here. It's the non-governmental agency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Their goal is to cut costs across the government cut bloat as well. And one of the ideas they floated is ending remote work for federal employees, but they've explicitly come out and said, we want to downsize the federal workforce.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
And we think this is the mechanism we can use for doing it. So I guess my question is, would you rather have Amazon or Starbucks just come out and say like, Hey, we are doing this to cut employees. Or do you think that it is better to do it in this like backdoor layoffs method a little bit under the more under the radar?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Kyle and Kayla join us to break down the biggest workplace stories of this year and the next. It's Monday, December 23rd. Let's ride. Let's ride. Kyle and Kayla, welcome to the show. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us. Just real quick before we dive in, can you give our listeners a quick explanation of who might enjoy or who might find useful your show per my last email?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
I wonder if we should revisit this segment if Amazon has just a killer year, if Starbucks just has a killer year. Maybe it does work. Yeah. I mean, we're all poo-pooing it right now because workers have shown this desire for flexibility, but maybe good old-fashioned in-person office working arrangements are going to be best for the company in the long run.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Okay, so this next topic I want to ask you guys about also deals with this concept of layoffs, but this time it's a term called sneaky layoffs. You all actually spoke about it on your show and defined it as these tiny technicalities that big companies are using to justify firing someone instead of maybe just laying them off. So what are these tiny technicalities?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Earlier this year, Meta laid off about 30 employees in their L.A. office for misusing their $25 meal credits. The employees were found to be spending them on things like nail polish, toothpaste, non-food items. Another instance of this happened at EY, the big accounting firm, which fired employees for watching multiple online training sessions at the same time. You can't pay me to do one.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
How are you?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
doing multiple sometimes gasp they were using multiple monitors fidelity fired some workers you guys spoke about this on your show for joining a fantasy football league at work which violated company gambling policies so to the average person letting go of someone over these seemingly minor offenses seems pretty crazy but what is the broader context here are these companies using selective enforcement to justify these reductions in headcount
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Right. So when a company is in hiring mode, for instance, they're happy to overlook those small things. But if they're in austerity mode or the year of efficiency mode, they might nitpick something. I believe they remember the employee manual and all the things that you can't allegedly do. Well, let's go down that.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
I'm sure a lot of people now hearing that, listening to this are saying, what can I do to make sure I don't run afoul of these things? Do you guys have any perspective on what you can do to make sure you're not part of these sneaky layoffs?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
The year of efficiency. I will need to see both of your fantasy football records to see where your head's at. I'm eight and five. Oh, sure you are. Sure you are. All right, another topic that you've mentioned and that we've talked about on Morning Brew Daily a lot is how many people that are using AI at work.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Google released this survey where they talked to over 1,000 young knowledge workers, and 93% of Gen Z respondents said that they were using two or more AI tools a week, 93%. Some of the use cases they mentioned for AI at work were revising emails, taking notes, or generating ideas. Nearly 90% actually said that they use AI to start a task that felt overwhelming.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
Now, our take on this was consider the source. Google ran the survey, and they obviously have a vested interest in showing that AR products are catching on in the workplace. But from where you guys sit, give us a broad overview of where you see AI in the workplace. Is it really a game changer, or is it still a ways off from affecting people's daily work lives?
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
I will give you a little feather in your cap, Kayla, because you've been getting ganged up on in this segment. Slack ran this larger survey. They talked to 17,000 workers across multiple countries, and they found that overall, across all ages, AI use in the workforce was actually stalling out a little bit. So perhaps it was a more international survey.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
It talked to just a wider range of people, not just these young, hungry knowledge workers. So you could be right that maybe it isn't vibing with a lot of people's workflows. Maybe they've had bad experiences with that. I'm just giving you a little bit of backup here, Kayla.
Morning Brew Daily
2024 Work Trends: Return to Office, Sneaky Layoffs and are MBAs Worth it?
You're not alone out there.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Wise Business provides you with one account for all your international business finances. You can pay vendors, suppliers and manage expenses in over 40 currencies.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
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Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Welcome to our Winners of the Weekend, where Neil and I pick two stories from Saturday and Sunday that had a better weekend than the people of New York City, who had their first 80-degree day in months. Neil, I won the pre-show typing contest, Mavis Beacon really coming in clutch, so I'm up first. And my winner of the weekend is Home Depot, because springtime means it's money-making time.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Well, your first thought when it comes to Home Depot is that kitchen renovation you've been putting off. The real moneymaker for the DIY store isn't 2x4s, it's petunias. Home Depot's garden department makes more money for the business than appliances, lumber, or paint. The $20 billion it pulls in annually is more than the entirety of Hermes' revenue because more people need begonias than Birkins.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So how does Home Depot prepare for the rush of people wanting to try out their green thumbs come springtime? With an event known as the Spring Trials.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
A Wall Street Journal reporter recently visited this all-important event in an industrial warehouse behind an office park and described the magic of the private gardening event where breeders, growers, and buyers all mingle to figure out which shapes and smells the garden department will be filled in in the coming years.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Right now, you're in the present, Jennifer McCormish, one of Home Depot's head of live goods, told the Journal. But when you walk through those doors, it's the future. The goal is to find plants that are hardy enough to withstand different climates and easy enough to care for that first-timers become repeat customers after they tasted some gardening success.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
two-thirds to elect a new pope, so the voting can often take several rounds. Each time an unsuccessful vote takes place, they burn the ballots and kind of cause black smoke to pour from the Sistine Chapel's chimney.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The event has also become all the more important as higher interest rates and housing costs have lower demand for expensive renovations. So, Neil, what does the future look like? It's bright, flowery, and Home Depot hopes it smells like money.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
What's coming down the pipeline, though? There's a couple to keep an eye out for. One plant variety is Amore petunias. They're named Amore because every bloom has a pattern that looks like a heart on it. Apparently, it's going to be a big Mother's Day hit, so remember that, people. Ficuses, too. They've technically been on the out recently because they shed, the leaves fall off, but
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
A new one with better foliage retention called the Klingon ficus is coming to a Home Depot near you. There's also a basil plant with greater leaf surface area to produce better pesto. And then the star of the show, people were crowding around this one. This was the Super Cal all-weather petunia. It's heat tolerance makes it suitable for every single part of the U.S. climate.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So one person looking at it said, this thing is a unicorn. So those are a couple of the plant varieties that you should keep in the back of your mind next time you want to test out your green thumb.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
But once a new pope is elected and accepts, the world finds out when the paper ballots are burned with a special chemical that makes white smoke pour from the chapel's chimney, indicating that a new religious leader has been chosen. So it could be very soon after the conclave is convened,
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
One person who is very happy to see these stats is Clippers owner Steve Ballmer, who put $2 billion into this new arena. And the whole arena is geared around making it a very hostile place for opposing teams. And the way you do that is by keeping these crazy fans in their seats at all times throughout the game. So there's other aspects where there's a lot of easy...
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
commerce that you can do right from your seat. You don't have to wait in long concessions lines. There's also a ton of restrooms, so you can get up, quickly find an empty toilet, get back to your seat before the action starts. They have clocks around the arena telling people how long it will be until the action starts up again.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And the whole environment is geared towards really like a European soccer-style environment, which it actually was inspired by. Borussia Dortmund has this thing called The Wall, where all their diehard fans sit behind the opposing goal as well. So I love that he put his money where his mouth is.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
He's seeing some results now with the free throw percentage, but we'll see if it's actually an enduring mode or if it's more just a one-season aberration.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Or it could take a while, but it will likely be faster than the longest papal conclave in history, which lasted two years and nine months from November 1268 to September 1271, which they eventually settled when the townspeople locked the cardinals and reduced their food rations until they finally did elect a pope.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Yeah, usually when all these economists gather for something like the IMF, they talk policy coordination, things like climate change, inflation. But now this year, the one topic of conversation will be tariffs. Also, a lot of focus will be on one man in particular, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who is kind of the lead negotiator for the Trump administration when it comes tariffs.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
to tariff deals. So whose support also for the IMF in general and the World Bank is a little bit of a question mark. So a lot of uncertainty. They say, you know, economics has earned the moniker of the dismal science. So I think it's kind of living up to that moniker right now.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
That is a new record. Mark the time stamp right now.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
I'm excited for Chipotle as well, because springtime typically means it's burrito season. You guys think that springtime is marked by pollen. I think it's met by increased foot traffic, buying more burritos from Chipotle.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
I mean, it's the horse that we should be giving kudos to. But if you are a Boston Marathon fan and you're looking for someone to root for, look no further than American Connor Mance. He just set the half marathon U.S. record, so he's in good form right now. In the last 41 years, only one American has won the Boston Marathon. So if you want to root for someone, put your energy behind Connor Mance.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So hopefully it won't come to that, but that's generally the process that the Catholic Church is about to follow.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
I don't know. I mean, that sounds actually pretty spot on, but I'm just worried about the fact that Green Bay is hosting at the NFL draft. Last year, 775,000 people descended upon Detroit over multiple days for the NFL draft. That was an NFL record at the time. But Green Bay has 5,000 hotel rooms. If you expand it more to Appleton and some cities a little ways away, it increases.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
But how can that many people descend on a city this small? I hope Green Bay figures it out because if not, people are going to be sleeping outside on some chilly Green Bay mornings.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
I mean, my weird story is I know the guy who founded this. He kind of is a young kid. He used to take meetings with VCs in his bathroom at high school. Like, literally, when I talked to him, he was in the stall of his toilet. So definitely, like, a viral marker knows how to generate a lot of headlines. And, yeah, they think that this could be as big as Formula One racing or the UFC.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
They don't actually think that. Yeah, again, part of it is just bringing attention. Most of it is bringing attention to this issue. But, I mean, hey, they got us talking.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Yeah, it's really looking forward to unlocking at least $1.2 billion in additional revenue for Capital One. Because historically, they've had to rely on different networks like Visa and MasterCard to kind of facilitate these transactions. And so when you can cut out that middleman, you have more control over the prices that merchants are charged each time a consumer swipes a card.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So it just adds in a little bit of extra cost savings. And you're right. When you have that little war chest now, you can start doing things like upgrading your airport lounges, which has historically been very important to a lot of credit card holders.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And you do start to compete at that higher echelon of credit card owners, the Amexes of the world, the Chase Sapphire Preferreds of the world, or Reserves of the world. And yeah, so it does look like Capital One is saying, hey, this is where the money is. We've historically catered to this group of people. Now we want to go upmarket.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
It reminds me even of Spirit Airlines, who typically cater to a budget customer. They're now offering additional premium seatings in the front of their plane. So I feel like a similar sort of rebrand is happening for Capital One. And this merger kind of sets the groundwork for all of that.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And then the final aspect is that this deal definitely encourages, you know, the financial services industry who, when Trump was elected, thought they'd see an uptick in mergers and acquisitions. So this deal, everyone was kind of weighted with bated breath, seeing how it would transpire, would it actually be approved or not.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So this is maybe one of those signs of a thawing M&A industry, especially when it comes to, you know, big financial services tie-ups like Discover and Capital One. This next story is for all you runners out there. You ever been in a race and been passed by someone and thought to yourself, holy moly, they're a machine. How are they running like that?
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Well, at a half marathon in China over the weekend, struggling runners were literally being passed by machines as 21 humanoid robot models towed the line alongside their human counterparts. Organizers billed the race as a chance for domestic robotics labs to show off their progress, especially as China races for technological supremacy over the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So there was a lot at stake for the assembled group of fitness-inclined bipedal humanoids. And like humans, some robots had solid races while others not so much. The star of the show was Tiankung Ultra, a 5'9", 115-pound machine that donned an orange tank top for its 13.1-mile romp. Three people ran alongside it to help control its halting progress.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Then Hollywood studio execs are freaking out over a deal Ryan Coogler cut for his new movie Sinners. It's Monday, April 21st. Let's ride.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Despite one fall and three battery changes, it managed to navigate the curvy and hilly course to finish in 2 hours, 40 minutes, and 42 seconds.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Not exactly a Boston Marathon qualifying time, or close to the first men's finisher who finished in just 62 minutes, but good enough to win the robot race, especially on a day when only two of the original 21 finished under the three and a half hour time limit.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Still, it was a surreal sight on social media this weekend to see these robots outside a factory line or a controlled research setting and amongst real people actually running a race. And a perfect metaphor, too, Neil, for the geopolitical robotics race that is also happening between the U.S. and China.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Yeah, I mean, maybe running is not even the right term for some of the stuff that these robots were doing. I mean, Tian Kang, who won the race, at some points needed a helper to run alongside it with their hands hovering around its back and neck in case it fell over. A lot of them were running with people holding leashes to make sure that they don't crash.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
But still, running a course out in the real world is different than these controlled demos that we've seen a lot out of companies like Tesla, out of Boston Dynamics when they do their crazy obstacle course stuff like that. And it was funny to see just the vast array of robots that were trotted out there. One of my favorites was Little Rascal N2, which was four feet tall, 66 pounds.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And it ran kind of like a child. And it just was very funny seeing this four-foot thing kind of motor along. Another one had propellers. So they didn't all go as planned. That being said, some... AI and robotics experts were saying, this isn't actually as impressive as China was kind of framing this to be. The technology for learning how to run doesn't require any AI breakthrough.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
This has been around for five years at this point. So basically what this was was more of a hardware endurance example, showing that the joints can withstand two hours plus of pounding. Because nearly three hours is a lot of pounding. I've run marathons before. It hurts your joints, hurts your knees.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
So maybe it wasn't as as big of like the brains of the robot, but it was maybe the brawn of the robot that was on display.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Well, someone finally did it. Sinners, the Jim Crow era drama thriller survival horror mashup written and directed by Ryan Coogler starring Michael B. Jordan as twin bootleggers turned juke joint owners battling river dancing vampires finally kicked the Minecraft movie out of the top spot at the box office.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Audiences are digging it with the movie bringing in over $45 million at the North American box office this past weekend, the biggest debut for an original film since Jordan Peele's Us in 2019. And critics really love it. It currently has a 98% Rotten Tomatoes rating from 223 critics, which when you combine that with its audience rating means it's tied with the godfather on the site.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
But here's the issue. Sinners has to be not just a success, but a smashing one. One, because it costs a lot, around $150 million to make in market. And two, Warner Bros. struck a very unique deal with Ryan Coogler.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
The Black Panther director not only secured final cut approval and first dollar participation, which lets them start earning money even before the studio makes a profit, but he also negotiated a deal which 25 years after release reverts all ownership rights back to him. That has the industry shaking in its boots.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
If directors start demanding rights reversions, the very model of building and owning a film library, which spits off revenue through licensing and distributing to other channels like pay-per-view, the bedrock and money-making machine that powers Hollywood could crumble. So Neil, great movie. People love it. Critics love it.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
But the question studio execs are asking is if the success it's having right now is worth shaking the foundations of the Hollywood studio model.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
Right, and the thing that it means is that maybe your library won't be as valuable as it was. Libraries are the main reason why studios have the valuations that they do because that allows the films to have long-term value rather than just their box office receipts because they make it to DVD, they make it to pay-per-view, they make it to stuff that... People watch after it leaves the theaters.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And so if you build up that library over time, that makes your company valuable. But if suddenly 25 years down the line, those movies leave that library, then suddenly your whole foundation for how you are valued, how you make money, is shaken, so that's why people are saying, wow, this is shaking the very foundations of the industry itself.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
A lot of people have also called out too, like, why are we establishing this crazy narrative around sinners too? Ben Stiller literally tweeted last night that, because a lot of headlines came out, like, oh, sinners did well at the box office, but it needs to make this amount of money to, you know, turn a profit.
Morning Brew Daily
Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
And Ben Stiller was like, in what universe does a $60 million opening for an original studio movie warrant this headline? People are saying it's being covered very unfairly when it comes to the grand scope of the movie industry. But it does have this interesting through line of this deal that Coogler struck that is having some studio execs shaking in their boots.
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Capital One-Discover Mega Merger & Why Hollywood Execs Are Freaking Out
No, seriously, Conclave does a pretty good job of explaining what happens. All cardinals under the age of 80 gather in the Vatican to begin the process of choosing a new pope in about two weeks. Just like in the movies, the cardinals vote in the Sistine Chapel and are kept under tight lockdown during the whole conclave with minimal outside news. They need a majority of
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Ja, Generation Beta.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
And now, here's Phil from
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
You are a big fan of Costco's business model and frankly who isn't $1.50 hot dog soda combo. You cannot beat that. What can the retail industry learn from the way Costco does things while maintaining their own identity?
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
We've been talking about food a little bit and you have posted some videos about fast food. Chipotle's market cap right now is around $76 billion. McDonald's is $200 billion. What does calories per dollar have to do with the gap between those two market caps potentially narrowing over the coming years?
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
My first prediction, the AI bubble pops, Nvidia stock falls 50% as big tech companies reduce their spending on chips.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Yeah, Vision Pro was a big swing, but a big flop, yeah.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
There you go. Alright, next one. Tariffs reignite inflation and rather than cutting rates, the Fed hikes rates at least one time next year.
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
So far we're 0 for 5 on predictions. They've all been pretty strong. Our highest is a 2 so far. So let's see what you think about this next one, our second to last one. Starbucks' stock more than doubles after returning to sales growth under new star CEO Brian Nickel.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Yeah, 12 months. It doesn't have to be more than doubles, but Starbucks' stage is a comeback is the general thrust of it.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Phil, willkommen zum Show.
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Weil du Brian Nickel vertraust oder weil du denkst, dass sie ihre Café-Situation herausfinden werden und es eine glückliche Erfahrung machen, um wieder Kaffee zu bekommen?
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Und Sie finden ihn auch auf allen sozialen Medienplattformen unter der Handlung Maxonomics. Phil, ich wollte dich nur mal Philonomics nennen, während dieses Shows. Also danke dir so sehr, dass du aufgehört hast. Wir haben da viele Themen gespielt, also hoffe ich, dass ihr alle auch nach Hause gelesen habt. Schaut Phil's Sachen an. Er ist auf allen Plattformen und er macht tolle Sachen.
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Also, erste Frage. Dein YouTube-Kanal und Social-Media-Accounts sind Maxonomics, aber dein Name ist Phil. Was ist da los? Wer bist du und wie bist du am Morgenbrot?
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Danke, dass du uns besucht hast, Phil. Danke dir so sehr, dass du mich besucht hast.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Bis zum nächsten Mal.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Hatten wir tatsächlich einen Verbesserung in der domänen Produktion der Industrie gesehen, die von Tarifen beeinflusst wurde? Das ist die Art von Verteidigungs-Mindset, wenn es um Tarifen geht. Wenn man diese Tarifen anbietet, wird es hoffentlich Menschen ermöglichen, ihre Produktion in die USA zu bringen und hoffentlich diese spezifischen Industrien zu stärken. Hatten wir das letzte Mal gesehen?
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
A ton going on. That's a great way to describe this episode that we taped ahead of the holiday. We talked to Phil Andrews, who is the man behind the Maxonomics brand for Morning Brew. This guy is a human encyclopedia. He can talk with expertise on topics ranging from autonomous cars to Costco's store design to whether the US should buy Greenland.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
Let's shift gears here a little bit. If you take a scroll through your Instagram page, you'll see a lot of videos about the airline industry, specifically Southwest. That airline recently announced it is changing its famous boarding system to include assigned seats and premium perks.
Morning Brew Daily
'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
What do you think about Southwest kind of ditching its roots and following more in line with the broader airline industry?
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
But first, a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, one of the beautiful things about investing is the earlier you get started, the more things compound.
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'Maxinomics' Explains Tariffs, the Space Race, Can the US Buy Greenland? And More
I think as you fly over each state where it is legal, it drops in and out when you're over that state-specific airspace. So as you're flying over Vegas, get your bets in, and then once you hit Iowa, it's done. Let's go up in altitude a little bit. You posted a video recently about the new Space Race. What is the new Space Race?
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
We've had this story of the Sun Belt rising, but it is just jarring to see these names kind of populate the list of the biggest cities in the country.
Morning Brew Daily
US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
My winner of the weekend is Kaitlyn Clark, because she has picked up right where she left off, breaking ankles, setting records and getting tangled up with Angel Reese. As the Indiana Fever kicked the WNBA season off this weekend against Angel Reese in the Chicago Sky, Clark proved to everyone that her Rookie of the Year campaign last season
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Das war nicht eine Anonyme, sondern nur eine Vorstellung von dem, was zu kommen ist. Sie hat einen 20-Punkt-Triple-Double gedroht, als die Fever den Sky-Route bei 35. Die W ist sicherlich froh, dass sie ihre größte Star in Sterling-Form sehen.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Letzte Saison hatte die Liga 22 regelmäßige Saison-Games, die mehr als 1 Million Zuschauer beobachten, das erste Mal seit 2008, dass sie sogar gewonnen haben. Wenn du in die All-Star-Game und den Draft schiebst, 24 WNBA Events drew more than a million eyeballs last year and Clark was part of 21 of them.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
While the WNBA is chock full of talent, Asia Wilson, Breonna Stewart, the newly drafted Paige Beckers, in terms of public interest, Clark still rises above, something the league has caught on to. Neal, wir haben die TV-Nummern noch nicht, aber ich würde mir vorstellen, dass jeder, der mit der W beteiligt ist, sehr glücklich ist, dass Clark right where she left off.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Vielen Dank. Das ist eine symbolische Bewegung, weil das bedeutet, dass die USA keine mehr eine AAA-Kreditrate von einer der drei großen Rating-Agenzien haben.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Yeah, the biggest kind of parallel that I want to draw here is that Chris Collins once said, if NBC had their choice, we would do 17 capitals. Ja, genau. puts Cowboys on prime time. Even if they were 7-10 last year, they were horrible, but they're opening up the season once more because they draw the ratings.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
So you're seeing a similar thing happen where the league has figured out that, hey, this is our biggest star. I'm sorry if some other teams feel like we're not getting the same amount of billing as you are, but you're not the Cowboys. You're not Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever. So it's just interesting how there is parallels between the biggest league in the world and now the WNBA with Cowboys.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Katelyn Clark wird leider in den Cowboys. Ich sage leider nur, weil es ein paar Jahre lang für die Cowboys war. Aber es ist faszinierend, dass sie auf dem gleichen Ratings-Bandwagon springen.
Morning Brew Daily
US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Ja, going back to Walmart, they had this clear pan for how it was weathering tariffs, leaning on its grocery business. They sourced two thirds of their goods from the US. And then, of course, it will bump up prices. But maybe you're a little more nervous for its peer, Target, who relies a lot more on discretionary heavy merchandise, the stuff you bought
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Ich bin ein bisschen nervöser, wenn ich ein Target-Shareholder wäre.
Morning Brew Daily
US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Yeah, there was always this fear that this was a way for foreign actors to buy influence with the sitting president. It looks like that is playing out. Or actually, we don't even know what it looks like yet because we don't know who these people are. And by the way, what has happened with TrumpCoin since it kind of launched? It's fluctuated wildly. It debuted and shot up to about $75 per coin.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
By the time this auction for this dinner ended, it was hovering around $12 a coin. Some analysis of the crypto industry put... Die Anzahl von 750.000 Verkäufern hat Geld verloren, um die Karte zu handeln, also ist es nicht unbedingt ein sehr stabiles Geldvermögen für viele Menschen.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Hey, hey. We have a fastball to Disney. You're not the only one with good properties to make parks about.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
I think a tizzy might be putting it a little lightly, Neil. I cannot wait to see what this city does if the Knicks makes the finals, let alone wins it. Also, Timothée Chalamet is officially Lissan Al-Gayyib at this point.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
That is wild. I saw this video of Cruise at AMC in Lincoln Square over the weekend at a theater in New York City. And someone took a pic of him saying that he had been talking to the movie staff there for 15 minutes straight.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
The dude just loves making movies, he loves being in movies, he loves talking about movies, and he loves doing insane stuff, so I guess, I don't know where, who's gonna fill the Mission Impossible void after he leaves, maybe, I don't know, Timothee Salomé is next up, but yeah, quite a run for Tom Cruise.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Yep, according to Sherm, you're juggling on average 16 or more platforms. Think hiring, onboarding, training, performance and compensation.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Clear Company is a full-spectrum HR platform designed to support the entire employee lifecycle. No more endless tabs, no more disconnected tools and no more reporting headaches.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Millions of users and job seekers already trust Clear Company. So whether you're scaling an empire or need to upgrade your HR playbook, visit clearcompany.com to elevate your talent management.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Yeah, this was both a surprise, but then not really at all. It was a surprise because Moody's had held out for so long and nothing super major had changed. But it's also not a surprise because you're right, S&P and Fitches were on this AA1 bandwagon long before now. And when you dig into the numbers, it's not super pretty. The US government paid over $1.1 billion.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Trillionen Dollar in Interests on his debt last year. That's bigger than the Pentagon's entire budget. And Moody's is concerned that going forward, the US won't be able to generate enough tax revenue to actually cover the interest on his debt, which could lead to the nasty cycle of having to borrow more money just to pay interest on the money it's already borrowed.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
So again, and then when you throw in Trump's big, beautiful bill again, Es ist keine große Überraschung, dass das passiert. Nur die Zeitung, ohne dass es ein beeindruckendes Event ist, ist das Einzige, was einige Leute in den Kopf gerissen hat.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Ja, sie flotten. Und es hat auch nur geforderte Angst vor dem US-Bondsmarkt. Der große Angst hier ist, ob Investoren, sowohl gewaltige Investoren als auch institutionelle Investoren, werden sie die Treasuries für andere Safe Haven-Assets swappen, die wir bereits gesehen haben. A little bit. And we're already seeing yields start to rise in response to the downgrade.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
It's definitely one of those things where like, oh no, will investors just start ignoring US bonds? If you go back in history, that hasn't really been the case, because actually foreign investors have piled into even more US debt since FITS first downgraded the US back in 2011. So maybe it's not the big alarm bells that people are seeing. That being said, though, we did see yields rise overnight.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
So maybe there is something more to this particular downgrade. A kidnapping attempt in broad daylight has gripped Paris and drawn new attention to a disturbing trend sweeping Europe, crypto-millionaires being targeted by criminals.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
The inciting incident took place back on May 13th, where three hooded men were caught on camera jumping out of a white van in an upscale neighborhood of Paris and trying to snatch the daughter of a prominent crypto-millionaire in broad daylight.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Dann eine Wave von brazen Verbrechungen rockt die Krypto-Industrie. Es ist Montag, Mai 19. Lass uns fahren.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
There has been a recent surge in similar instances, including two that have involved fingers of loved ones being chopped off and sent to crypto millionaires to demand a payment.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Obviously, the attacks have shaken the industry to its core, which semi-ironically has resulted in calls from crypto magnates for increased government intervention, not something you usually hear from fans of decentralization."
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Die Gefühle für physische Sicherheit haben sich auch im Hinblick auf einen berühmten Coinbase-Bereich aufgeräumt, welcher Hackern den Zugang zu Kundendaten ermöglicht hat, um noch mehr kripto-freie Individuen im Risiko von echten Threaten zu verursachen.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Neal, einige der Details von diesen Abduktionsszenen sind aus einem Film herausgepumpt, vollständig mit Ransomnoten und Copycat-Attacken, die die Staatsanwaltschaft dazu gebracht haben, zu glauben, dass organisierte Krimi involviert worden sind. Es ist also eine sehr furchtbare Zeit, ein kripto-reicher Individuum zu sein.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Die Online-Systeme machen es weniger gefährlich für Hacker, die versuchen, Geheimdienste zu stehlen. Aber das hat sie dementsprechend mehr zu physischen Angriffen verursacht. Denn wenn man online nicht reinkommt, bedeutet das, dass man sie in der realen Leben kidnappt. Es ist also fast ein perverses Incentiv, das Kriminelle verursacht hat, Menschen zu starten. IRL.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
And the Parisian police are saying that we do think that word has gotten out amongst organized criminals because we've seen just a string of attacks that are very similar in nature. And some experts are saying there's this mistaken belief that crypto transfers are just completely untraceable. That's not necessarily true.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
And so I think criminals might start to figure out that, wait, this is not as anonymous as we initially thought. These attacks may go down, but it's clearly something that frees Wenn du in der Personal-Security- oder Bodyguard-Business bist, dann ist die Zeit nie besser geworden. Das ist eine verrückte Statik.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
New Jersey has gone from one hellish transportation headache to another, leaving the Garden State fully stuck in the mud. Trains weren't running over the weekend because of New Jersey transit engineer strikes. Planes are delayed or grounded because of air traffic control issues. Even cars are having a rough time after a stretch of highway was closed due to sinkholes.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
But yesterday provided some relief after the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said it would call off their strike. und die New Jersey Transit-Trains werden am Dienstagmorgen wieder einen vollen Zeitraum aufbauen, nachdem ein tentatives Deal erreicht wurde.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Es endet einen disruptiven Zeitraum für das dritte größte Transit-System der Nation und die 1 Millionen wöchentlichen Passagiere, die es um die Tri-State-Area fährt. Die Union hat gesagt, dass ihre Mitglieder einen average Salary von 113.000 Dollar pro Jahr erzielen. Vielen Dank. as the New York Times described it.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Ja, und es waren nicht nur schlechte Monate und Jahre, sondern auch schlechte letzten drei oder vier Tage, weil, ich meine, Uber-Preise waren nur nuklear, weil es nur die einzige Option war, für viele Leute zu arbeiten, eine Autoservice zu rentieren. Und es war auch eine schwierige Zeit für Banken und andere große Firmen, die versucht haben, ihre Leute zurück in den Büro zu bringen.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Das hat einen Dampfer aufgenommen, weil niemand in die Arbeit kommen konnte. Also haben sich einige Leute, die in den Büro gezwungen wurden, gesagt, warte, ich habe einen Geschmack von dieser Remote-Welt. Wiederum hatte ich diesen Entschluss, dass ich nicht in die Büro kommen würde. Und jetzt scheint es ein ziemlich gutes Ding zu sein. Das war also ein Rückgang für viele große Banken.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Some bankers told stories about how they were just leaving their family in New Jersey behind and staying over on their friends couch in Brooklyn because they didn't want to deal with commuting over the next few days. So just an enormous amount of headaches because this transit system serves so many millions and hundreds of thousands of people per day.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Up next, let's talk about our winners of the weekend. Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research and know the currency conversion.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
WISE helps you manage your business's finances in 40 plus currencies, all with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate and no ongoing subscription costs. It's fast too. Sounds like a business's best friend. To learn more about how you can use WISE Business to save time, money and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity. And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases. There are no points to calculate, no limits or deadlines.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone. Das war's für heute. Bis zum nächsten Mal.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Ja, following the diagnosis, former President Obama said, nobody has done more to find breakthrough treatments for cancer in all its forms than Joe. And what he's referring to there is the cancer moonshot program that the White House announced back in 2016 with the goal of eliminating cancer as we know it. It eventually became known as the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative. Vielen Dank.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Yeah, cities are back. Part of the reason too is just that the overall population gained as well. Nationwide the population rose about 1% over the same period. So more people means more people going to cities as well. That 1% gain doesn't sound like much, but that was actually the highest increase we've seen in a generation. So maybe that's part of the turnaround.
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US Loses Top Credit Rating & Crypto Wealthy Being Targeted?
Holy Moly, I cannot believe how big some of these southern cities are. I mean, the fact that Jacksonville now has more than a million people, it's just unfathomable to think about, because I've played soccer tournaments there. It doesn't feel like a million-person city, and yet people just continue to pour in there. One, that's where the space is. One, that's where lower taxes are.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Online Shopping is what a lot of people do most of their shopping these days, so it doesn't really matter if it's light or dark out. Another thing too is that daylight savings time is supposed to make your electric bill cheaper, but there hasn't been really any agreement on whether it actually does lower energy use. And then finally, sleep and health is a big one as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Standard time when it's lighter in the mornings does... Das hilft deinem Schikadien-Rhythmus, weil das Sonnenlicht, jeder, der den Andrew Huberman-Pod hört, weiß, dass Sonnenlicht-Exposure wahrscheinlich gut für dich ist. Es bietet einen besseren Nachtschlaf, weil es dich auf den Schikadien-Rhythmus bringt.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Aber auch mehr Sonnenlicht in den Abends ist wahrscheinlich gut für deine mentale Gesundheit, weil niemand es mag, wenn es dunkel ist, wenn du jeden Tag auf dem Weg gehst. Also für jeden Argument für eine Seite der Equation, haben einige Leute einen anderen Argument, die für die andere Seite argumentiert.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Ja, ich glaube, wenn er gesagt hat, dass er Daylight Saving beenden will, bedeutet das, dass er Daylight Saving permanent machen will, weil das ist, was er in 2019 unterstützt hat. Ich glaube, dass er das beenden will, weil er sagt, dass wir nicht mehr Klöcke schalten wollen, wir wählen eine Art oder andere.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Und ich glaube, dass er, basierend auf seinen vorherigen Statements, DST permanent machen will. My winner of the weekend is Hot Wheels, because they are on fire right now. The 56-year-old brand is the best-selling toy in the world, according to the market research firm Circona, with fans stretching from 3-year-olds all the way up to 63-year-olds.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
It's one of the standout lines under the Mattel umbrella, going toe-to-toe with the likes of Barbie, and saw its sales grow 14% to reach nearly $1.5 billion last year. Bis zum nächsten Mal. The only way I can describe it, Neil, is Hot Wheels is hot.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
I do think you can't overlook price either because selling for $1.25 a piece, that's a big draw in an inflationary environment. Especially if you think, if you actually do the math, the toys cost less today than they did in 1968. They retailed for about 69 to 89 cents back in the 60s and 70s. But that's roughly $6 to $8 in today's dollars. So
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Right. There has been a little bit of pushback because people have shown the bottom of Hot Wheels cars and how over time they've been a little simplified because you're right, they are producing a lot. But one of the things is, I mean, I mentioned that they're selling 22.5 Hot Wheels toys per second. They're also making 22.5 Hot Wheels toys per second.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
So that level of scale allows them to sell them for very cheaply. And maybe it's subsidized by this subscription plan that some people are Vielen Dank. Wenn das nicht der Fall ist, oder wenn das nicht nur ein Gleichgewicht dieser Toy-Forces ist, dann weiß ich nicht, was es ist.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Focused on road performance, but with world-famous off-road capability. It's the fire and ice of cars, the Toby and Neil of cars.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
This might be the last meeting where we know what's going to happen because there are just so many question marks on the horizon. Does inflation just jump back up or are these tariffs going to be more of a bargaining chip?
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
If they do go into effect and jack up prices, that's when the situation becomes a little murky because how can you go ahead with rate cuts if you see inflation starting to creep back up?
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
I don't know. I mean, the only one I'm interested in is the Brutalist, because the Lion King prequel, I just haven't seen much buzz about, even though 2019 Lion King grossed 1.7 billion dollars worldwide. That is a gigantic number. I can't see this. It just doesn't seem like there's been much buzz about it. And then Squid Games. I can't believe we're still doing Squid Games. Well, it's Mr. Beast.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Ich weiß, dass es MrBeast ist, aber es fühlt sich an, als ob Squid Game's kulturelle Relevanz schon vorbei ist. Es hat noch eine Saison veröffentlicht und Squid Games auf YouTube, was er wiederentwickelt hat, hat es sehr gut gemacht.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
I think you're giving some off-road vibes these days.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
No disrespect to the Catamounts, but they eliminated my younger brother in his final collegiate game ever in the NCAA tournament. So I forever have a beef with them. So to see them doing well is a little bittersweet for me. But congrats to the Catamounts. That is an awesome achievement.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Ich möchte, dass du den Podcast mit jemandem teilst, der eine Theorie über die Drohnen hat. Ich weiß, du hast einen Onkel oder einen Cousin, der über diese Dinge nachgedacht hat. Also teile diesen Podcast, gib ihm die Drohnen-Konversation-Timestamp und sag einfach, ich denke, die anderen werden sich selbst kümmern.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Yeah, after keeping the Trump administration or the Trump campaign at a little bit of an arm's length during the campaign season, a lot of these CEOs are saying, you know what, I do not want to risk being on bad terms with Trump. Let's go speak with him face to face. Let's go to Mar-a-Lago and just see what he's about and see if we can create this relationship.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
The thing about some of these inaugural fund donations, too, is what it does is guarantee you some face time with Trump in advance, because Donors to the inauguration fund do get invitation to inauguration ball, access to a candlelit dinner with the Trumps, and then they also have access to a reception with a cabinet pick.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
So what you are seeing is paying a million dollars, saying like, I do want to have more opportunities to have FaceTime with you. And also one thing about inaugural committees is that they are pretty low stakes in terms of donations. They are seen as a very normal thing for companies to do to seek favor. Es gibt auch ein bisschen Patriotismus, ohne zu sehen zu werden, dass es sehr partizipal ist.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Ich würde nicht zu viel davon lesen, dass sie alle genau 1 Millionen Dollar anbieten, weil es dir den Zugang zu den Events gibt. Und es ist eine eher normale Sache, eine zukünftige Regierung zu machen.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
No, it's a drone hovering over New Jersey. But in reality, it's probably a plane. It's Monday, December 16th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Right, he is the other power player that CEOs are also trying to figure out how to navigate the relationship, because a lot of those CEOs could be aware that Musk could just punish his business rivals, could push them to the side. Sam Altman is obviously a big one of those. Elon Musk has reputedly sued OpenAI, saying...
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Er hat gesagt, dass Elon die richtige Sache machen wird, weil er sagt, dass es, quote, I mean, that could be a very optimistic look at the situation, but the reality is that Elon now has a ton of power in the administration. He could wield it one way or the other, and CEOs are trying to figure out how to navigate him as well as navigate Donald Trump.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
There is a new entrant into the 13-figure club. Chipmaker Broadcom pulled up a chair to sit at the $1 trillion market cap table just before the weekend. After reporting breakout fourth quarter earnings, the stock jumped 24% to creep into uncharted territory and has now doubled in value this year. Unsurprisingly, it's been AI that has pushed Broadcom into the big leagues.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
It supplies advanced AI hardware to big tech companies, much like NVIDIA, but also has a robust software business as well. AI revenue is up 220% this year, and it's gotten to the point that when Broadcom does well, shares of NVIDIA and competitors like AMD shrink on fears that incumbent AI stalwarts could lose market share to the surging Broadcom.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Looking forward, the company's CEO, Hawk Tan, expects its AI opportunity to reach $90 billion by 2027, powered by what it calls hyperscaler customers, which are those companies like Meta and Google that require large-scale data centers. Neil, Broadcom is not a name that a lot of people know off the top of their heads, but they will soon.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
That being said, though, its CEO, Hochtan, loves to take these big swings. I mean, it tried to acquire Qualcomm for the biggest tech acquisition ever, but it's also recently bought VMware for $61 billion. VMware helps with server virtualization. Das Vmware-Deal trägt nur Microsofts Verkauf von Activision, Blizzard und Dells Verkauf an, als die größten Tech-Deals jemals.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Es hat auch in 2018 einen Software-Vendor für 19 Billionen Dollar gekauft. Es hat auch eine Verkaufsverkauf von einer Sicherheitsfirma für 10 Billionen Dollar in 2019. Hochtan liebt es, auf diesen Shopping-Sprits zu gehen. Er liebt es, Broadcom als Mittel zu verkaufen. Aber Broadcom ist ein bisschen anders als Nvidia in dem Sinne, dass Nvidia GPUs verkauft, grafische Prozessunits.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Broadcom nennt seine Version von GPUs XPUs, die nur ein bisschen anders sind. Sie sind ein bisschen mehr vorgesehen. Diese Chips sind nicht nur für deine tägliche Firma. Sie sind nur für die Firmen, die wirklich die Ecke der Effizienz und Kraft drücken wollen. 20, 30% schneller, 20, 30%. Ja, genau.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Und jetzt sind es 1 Trillionen Dollar. Das ist ziemlich verrückt, weil man definitiv noch nie von Broadcom gehört hat, unless man sich in die Chip-Industrie eingeladen hat. Aber jetzt ist es literally Teil des 13-Figure-Clubs. Die Rumormille ist immer noch über die Drohnen, die über New Jersey fliegen, mit mehr Fragen als Antworten, die über den Wochenende auftauchen.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Um es zu beobachten, haben New Jersey-Besitzer sich in den letzten Wochen bewildert, weil Drohnen über ihr Staat fliegen. A US Army Research Facility has reported 11 confirmed instances of drones illegally entering its airspace, while more than a dozen drones have been spotted over a US naval weapons station since early December.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Sightings have also been reported in six counties across the state, prompting US lawmakers to get more involved. US Senator Chuck Schumer called on the Department of Homeland Security to deploy recently declassified tech that can ID and track drones back to their landing spots in an effort to get to the bottom of the sightings.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
As for what we do know, officials from Homeland Security say that the drones don't appear to be linked to foreign governments. While the FBI is pretty sure a lot of people have just been seeing planes. Quote, many of the reported drone sightings are in fact manned aircraft being misidentified as drones, they said in a statement.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Either way, Neil, we're now multiple weeks into these sightings and still no one has really gotten to the bottom of things.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
I mean, it does warm the heart. James Patterson is also a juggernaut. He sold more than 425 million copies of his book. His total income over the last decade is estimated at 700 million dollars. That being said, his books have been described as a literary equivalent of Kentucky Fried Chicken. He's often been criticized for co-authoring a lot of his stories, but
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
One thing that could be contributing to this though is that even if a lot of the sightings are planes, some people could be actually seeing hobbyist drones because a 2023 FAA regulatory change did allow drones to be flown at night, which could possibly be behind some of the increase in sightings. Plus, US law does. wirklich limitieren, wie die US-Militär tatsächlich zu Drohnen reagieren kann.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Sie können sie nicht einfach aus dem Luftraum schießen. Sie brauchen spezielle Beleidigungen. Sie müssen spezielle Beleidigungen an die lokalen Behörden geben, um mit Drohnen zu handeln. Vielleicht ist eine Kombination dieser beiden Faktoren zu einem erhöhten Anstrengung.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
Es könnte, ich meine, wir könnten über ein paar Prankster sprechen oder jemanden, der diese Drohnen fliegt, weil sie nachts ermöglicht werden, auch wenn sie nicht ermöglicht werden, in den FAA-bestimmten Luftraum zu gehen. Aber trotzdem, vielleicht sind das einige der Faktoren, die das auch beeinflussen. Es ist
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
A lot of people enjoy Kentucky Fried Chicken, Neil. And if it means some of his profits go towards these independent booksellers, sometimes you just have to tip your cap and say that is a good deed. Now a word from our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport. That's right, Neil. We're finishing off the year in style.
Morning Brew Daily
Tech CEOs Try to Charm Trump & Gov. Officials Call for Action vs Drones
You can make a lot of arguments for either side of this, whether you want to stay with standard time or move to permanent daylight saving times. One of them is consumer spending. Most people say that when people spend money after work, it's better to have more sunshine available because you would go to stores because it's still light out. That being said...
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So if you're a fan of Morning Brew, go show them some love and help them bring home some hardware. Plus, if they don't win...
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Plus, one of the big tailwinds, too, is people like shopping vintage now. It's cool. It's part of the fashion trend du jour right now, so that is another tailwind behind it. I do want to pour a little bit of cold water on this, though, mainly because if we enter into economic recession, that's not good for people buying any discretionary items, and vintage clothing might fall into that bucket.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And then secondly, too, you're seeing all these sites like Poshmark, like ThredUp, might... see this huge surge of supply because people are looking at their closet and saying like, hey, maybe I can make a little extra buck off of this shirt that I never wear. And so you're going to see this flood of supply coming onto the market right when demand might be drying up.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So that's not a good market force if you are within this secondhand industry. So there's multiple pathways ahead here, one of them being that people want to buy stuff that is not imported and therefore not subjected to tariffs. But then the other might be that supply and demand economics get all wonky and it doesn't see the boom that a lot of people are expecting.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
You're not allowed to yuck my winner.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Sorry for yucking at your yum here. But yeah, I mean, I guess I'll just end on a positive note for sure here. And the more aggressive the U.S. trade policy becomes, maybe the better positioned secondhand sellers actually are, especially in the war against fast fashion sellers like Shein and Timu.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
My winner of the weekend is Neil and Toby because we made it this far into the show without really talking about what happened at the Masters. But talk about it, we must. Rory McIlroy finally got the monkey off his back, which thank goodness because my heart could not take his shenanigans anymore.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And as he put his arms through the sleeves of one of the most unique prizes in golf, a green jacket, a thought struck us. What is a green jacket actually worth? Luckily, The Athletic did a deep dive and their answer was multifaceted. On the one hand, Rory took home a record $4.2 million for winning the Masters. But what if the jacket itself made it to a secondary market? What could it fetch?
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Thankfully, we have a few data points thanks to an auction house formerly known as Green Jacket Auctions, who was subsequently sued and changed their name to Golden Age Auctions. A green jacket belonging to 1957 champion Doug Ford sold for over $60,000 back in 2010. while a 1959 winner, Art Wall's coat, fetched a similar price.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Those are small potatoes, though, compared to Horton Smith's green jacket from his 34 and 36 wins, which sold for 10x the price of the others, bringing in $682,000 in 2013. Now, no offense to Horton Smith, but the second priciest auction for a green jacket has a way cooler backstory.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Don't I ever throw a massive orchestra behind a guy tying his shoes and suddenly it's a heroic journey. There's a reason why my top genre on Spotify last year was actually movie soundtracks.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Somehow, the most coveted prize in golf ended up in a pile of old blazers at a Toronto thrift store where someone bought it for $5. The name tag inside was cut out, but the so-called thrift store jacket sold for $139,000 in 2017. So the answer to the question, how much is a green jacket worth, is somewhere between $5 and $682,000, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And then finally, one of the greatest stories from green jacket lore that goes even beyond a Horton Smith six hundred and eighty two thousand dollar jacket is Arnold Blanchard.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
palmer's master screen jacket had been discussed in a sale of 3.65 million dollars back in 2022 and the way that that jacket was actually brought to that auction was it was stolen and eventually intercepted by the fbi in a sting operation there was this master's employee augusta employee who'd been stealing merchandise he filched the arnold palmer jacket was going to sell it off for nearly four million dollars but then the fbi got involved so
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Just some crazy lore when it comes to $5 thrift store jackets all the way up to nearly $4 million Arnold Palmer jackets that were busted by the FBI in a sting operation. The only way to get your hands on one is to just putt better if you're Rory or steal one and try to buy it on the black market.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
It's rich, creamy, delicious, and crafted to blend like dairy milk or a perfect melody.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
I mean, sending your soon-to-be wife, because they are getting married soon, up to space with all her friends, that is some high-stakes spaceflight right there. And also, I mean, I'm not the first one to make this joke, but saying... hey, honey, you want me to send you to space?
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
That might be inauspicious before your wedding, but first all-female crew to reach the internationally recognized boundary of space. So definitely a trailblazing moment and hope everything goes smoothly.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to TSMC, ASML to see how the semiconductor industry is affected by all this tariff uncertainty. And then also, yeah, that retail sales data is kind of a very, almost a real-time look into how consumers are feeling. So very curious about that as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And tonight we got WNBA draft as well. So Paige Becker's lottery is now open. So a lot of good basketball news coming down the pipeline.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And it's not just taste, you're getting calcium, vitamins A and D, plus they have an unsweetened version that has zero grams of sugar and still tastes great.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more. After weeks of layering more tariffs on China than a homemade lasagna, Trump hit a major part of the economy with a welcome reprieve late on Friday.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The administration issued a notice that carved out exemptions for smartphones, computers, semiconductors, and other consumer electronics that had companies from Apple to Dell breathing a little easier over the weekend. Still, it's by no means a full exhale. First, because other tariffs, around 30% total, still apply to electronics and smartphones coming into the U.S. from China.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And second, because Howard Lutnick, Trump's Commerce Secretary, went on TV to explain that these reciprocal tariff exemptions are likely to be short-lived and that separate tariffs are coming soon. On ABC, Lutnick clarified that
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
All those products, meaning smartphones, computers, etc., will fall under semiconductors and they're going to have a special focus type of tariff to make sure that those products get reshored. And Trump followed up that appearance with a post on True Social explaining that no tariff exception was announced at all on Friday and that the products are just moving to a different tariff bucket.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So the companies that we're celebrating are now left in another uncertain position, once again hanging in limbo as the administration works out sector-specific tariffs.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Yeah, the one thing that Apple can definitely hang on to, I'm using Apple here as kind of a proxy for any company that imports electronics, is that the tariffs are going to be lower. 125% was just kind of astronomical and caused those shipments of iPhones to come in via plane. But it does look like sector-specific tariffs are going to be probably around that 25% range.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Trump has also said that we're going to be very specific on Monday. So today is Monday. We'll get some of those specifics. Don't remind me. Yeah, everyone, it's Monday. But also these latest exemptions were a big deal because it covered $390 billion worth of U.S. imports, including more than $100 billion from China.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So that is why I use the term breathe a sigh of relief because everyone's like, oh, thank goodness. Like our iPhone isn't going to go up to, you know, $1,000 plus. Wow, they are almost. They already are, $35. Yeah, wow. $35.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
That felt like such a big number to me, but you're right. It's closer to $3,500. So that is why you saw kind of this big exhale, but we're still a little apprehensive with the sector-specific tariffs coming down the line.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Then Trump gave the electronics business a welcome reprieve from the most punitive tariffs. Only to clarify that, psych, it's going to be short-lived. It's Monday, April 14th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
just if you're keeping track at home, I just want to give one last run through of what has happened. So reciprocal tariffs from Liberation Day were applied. Then there was a removal of those back down to 10% across the board. Then there was the extra 50% Chinese tariffs, then 104%, then 125%, then 145%. Then electronics were exempted. Psych electronics are probably coming down the pipeline.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So Neil, good luck planning on where to locate your supply chain if you are a big electronics company these days. That was very helpful. Thank you. As all the uncertainty continues to swirl around exemptions that aren't exemptions and tariff rates that change by the hour, an interesting trade has begun to emerge amongst global investors. Sell America.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
For a long time, American capital, currency, and bond markets were the most attractive games in town, but now all three look shakier than Rory McIlroy's wedge play down the stretch. Take the U.S. dollar. Its exchange rate with the euro hit a three-year low on Friday and meaning Americans are only getting 88 cents on the euro on their vacations abroad.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The dollar has also seen drops compared to other so-called safe haven currencies like the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc. Demand for U.S. bonds and other treasury notes also largely fell last week, while German bonds gained ground as money flocked outside the U.S.A. So really what we have here is a reckoning. What if the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
dollar and government securities are not the global safe haven assets they have been for generations? It's an especially pertinent question coming off a wild week where riskier assets like stocks declined, but so did safer things like U.S. treasuries. That is something that just doesn't happen, or at least didn't happen under the previous economic world order.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
But now, Neil, sell America has totally upended things.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And the reason why we're calling this a shift is because usually a lot of money comes into the U.S. Two trillion dollars pours into U.S. businesses, banks, from investors outside of the country every single year. The U.S. actually receives 41% of all the money in the world that gets invested across national markets. And that has only been rising since the pandemic.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The story we've been telling on the show and amongst other news outlets is that the U.S. has bounced back from the pandemic better than any other developed country and that it looked like it was only increasing its global dominance when it comes to economic inflows. But then the week from craziness happened and that entire narrative is shifting now.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Now, I guess the caveat here is, is this a actual structural shift or was it really just a crazy week? And that you'll have to see play out over time. But seriously, some wonky stuff happening that made people say, sell America might actually be a real trade coming down the pipeline.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Yeah, and it's also the FTC swinging for the fences here. I mean, we haven't seen a corporate breakup of this scale since AT&T was broken up 40 years ago. So this is definitely a big kahuna that they're going off of here. Meta obviously doesn't want to lose Instagram because of the ad revenue it generates. It's going to generate around half of its ad revenue, which is a massive business for Meta.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
But also, they don't want to lose the distribution networks that Meta and what are that – WhatsApp and Instagram provide for their AI chatbot that right now they think that's the next frontier, that's the next big tech war that they're fighting.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
So obviously losing 50% of the revenue for their advertising business would be horrible, but losing the distribution channels is just the secondary effect that makes them really, really not happy about this case that the FTC brought against them.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
And one thing that Meta is just kind of rolling their eyes out is saying, hey, FTC, you approved this initially. Why are we saying that you can now litigate us all these years later? We went through the whole regulatory process, but the FTC is saying, hey, we still think you're making the market less competitive, which leads to a worse outcome for consumers.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
The government are saying that you had this buy or bury strategy, which is fantastic. snapping up competitors to either make yourself stronger or just eliminate competition on that front. So if you're Mark Zuckerberg, though, you're kind of going through this saying, I thought we went through this whole song and dance. How is this song and dance continuing? And it's just the beginning of it.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
Now, would we see Trump step in and maybe do something? Sure. But if it doesn't, this is a massive antitrust lawsuit that we haven't seen in over four decades at this point. Up next, it's our winners of the weekend.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
What's also fitting is when you can tap into the right network to target the professionals you're looking for.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
We sit next to these people every day and basically just hear them giggle to themselves as they cook up some of the funniest but also the most educational business content on the internet. But they also work extremely hard. I mean, Macy literally slept in a van on the street of New York for her hot dog video.
Morning Brew Daily
Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
On Public, you can build a multi-asset investment portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
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Smartphones Exempt From Tariffs… For Now & Meta vs. FTC in Antitrust Trial
They're also a U.S.-based company and member of FINRA with an award-winning customer support team trusted by millions. Generate fixed income with a suite of yield accounts like Publix High Yield Cash Account set at an industry-leading 4.1% APY.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
So hopefully that can get back up in the air soon because seeing these super scoopers in action is, It is pretty remarkable to see just how nimble the pilots can be and how accurate they can be when trying to fight these fires. Now a word from our sponsor, Public.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I do just want to paint the vision that Ryanair's CEO had. This was all the way back in 2005 that they were saying that potentially we should offer in-flight gambling. The vision was that potentially giving the money that you make off of these games, you could offer people the chance to fly for free because if you just change the business model to We are now a gambling business.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
That is where most of our revenue come. We just want people to gamble on board our planes. We don't actually need them to pay for a ticket. So that was the vision floated back in 2005. It hasn't exactly come to fruition because of various laws, but it just paints a different picture of what if your flying was subsidized by gambling in the air.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Obviously, there's a lot of other ethical and maybe potentially moral issues you could have with gambling up in the air. But yeah, this is definitely something that you see a headline like, Delta Inc. 's partnership with DraftKings, and you start to think, oh my gosh, am I really going to be cooking up parlays while I'm fastening in for a long-haul flight?
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Preach, Neil. My second winner of the weekend is Robo Vacuums because the days of your Roomba rolling over a dirty stock and knocking itself out of commission appear to be over.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Two companies, Roborock and Dream, unveiled commercial robot vacuums at CES this year that come with extendable arms that can pick up clutter in its path with grasping pinchers, then deposit them in a bin to clear the way for vacuuming. But Roborock or Dream won't be winning any arm wrestling competitions anytime soon.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Roborock's max capacity is 300 grams, which is a little bit more than half a pound, while Dream says its arm can lift up to 500 grams, which means it can pick up something as heavy as a shoe, as long as you're less than a men's size 9. Neil, it's not just Robo arms either. Dream's machine has quote-unquote legs that can propel itself up two inches in the air. Not exactly...
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
stair climbing height yet, but perfect for small elevation changes between rooms. But the main takeaway here, Neil, is that these things, these robot vacuum cleaners are evolving into almost full on little butlers.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
And then another innovation that got people talking was Samsung released this AI robot vacuum cleaner that can actually detect intruders if it sees suspicious activity during the time that it's out puttering around cleaning. It's your little Macaulay Culkin. Yeah, your house.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Well, what if someone offered you up to $10,000 for switching? Well, that would make change a little easier. With Public, you can fund your account in five minutes or less and earn up to $10,000 when you transfer your old investment portfolio.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
It will send you a push notification, but it also kind of conjured up these odd dreams of if these robots can eventually start climbing stairs, can see the environment around it. What if you wake up in the middle of the night and the robot has climbed in your room and is looking at you?
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
So it did open up a little bit of dystopian ideals here, but I do think that as the smarter you can make these robots, the more hurdles you can get them to overcome, the more effective that they actually are. The home is this very complex, this very dynamic environment for a robot to operate in. So seeing these innovations, it did get a lot of people fired up.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I had a Roomba vacuum cleaner right when they first came out, but they would just always end up under the couch or end up getting caught in the curtain like that. So the better that they can untangle themselves, the better that these products are going to be.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I'm getting my last scrolls in. I think I might just delete it today to rip the bandaid off because it will just be a long, slow... Remember, they're not going to delete it off of your phone. What will happen is that they won't be able to ship updates anymore. So the app will just continue to get more buggy, more laggy. So...
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Might as well just rip the bandaid off now and delete it while you still, you know, have the chance.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
This was a little trip down memory lane for us, too, because we spoke about when all of these people were nominated. Now we'll see if the confirmation process goes a little bit more smoothly than maybe the nomination process.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Neil, you have been telling me to watch Severance nearly every single day over the past week, so I think I just gotta rip the band-aid off and do it. It looks incredible.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I want you to share the podcast with someone who is already tired of winter. Just stay strong. A few more dark and cold days to go. And then we hit some slightly less dark and slightly less cold days. You got this. A few more as in two months.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I mean, just look at X to see the answer to that question because when X has been kind of the opposite of meta when it comes to brand safety, if you want return on investment, if you want this close relationship with these brands, you don't necessarily look at X as the poster child of that because with X,
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
uh, Elon Musk kind of more laissez faire this third party, uh, without fact checkers, uh, to keep the platform pretty buttoned up. You have seen advertisers kind of flee the platform and meta has long been seen as not a more of a safe Haven where you will find more brand safe content to place your ads next to. So even though a meta is kind of copying X's fact checking, uh,
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
approach, you do see how it can unsettle advertisers if you do not have some of these safeguards in place.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I don't think you will see advertisers care as long as the platform continues to perform. They don't really care what their ads are. appearing next to you if they are still getting the same ROI that they've been enjoying.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
So that's probably maybe the cold hard truth that a lot of these advertising execs did say like, hey, as long as it still makes sense to put our ad dollars there, we will do that regardless of the new fact-checking strategy. But I do think that last part that you mentioned is very important.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Zuck has kind of looked at the playing field here, seen some of the antitrust action that is being levied against big tech and saying, wait a second, whoever's currently in office has a lot of say and usually does end up influencing who or what the antitrust apparatus of the United States ends up operating like.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
And so trying to cozy up a little bit to the Trump administration might just be a long-term bet on the future of Meta. He's positioning himself. People are calling Zuckerberg a little bit of a chameleon in this sense that
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
He is going where the winds are blowing, so part of it is potentially something that he has to consider when it comes to impacting his business's bottom line, but also he is looking ahead and saying, I need to possess myself well for these next four years.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Workers at America's largest bank are donning their Patagonia vests and lacing up their dress shoes once again as they prepare for the end of the work-from-home era. Hybrid employees at JPMorgan got hit with a memo last week saying they will be asked to return to in-person work five days a week starting in March.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Most of the bank's workers were already back clocking in, including senior managers in client-facing roles. This latest move affects mostly back office roles like call center workers who had still been rocking two days a week from home. But so far, the bank's 300,000 plus employees aren't taking it very well.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
JP Morgan ended up shutting off comments on the internal memo after employees criticized the move, with some even suggesting unionizing. Neil, on the one hand, about 70% of the bank's employees were already back in the office five days a week. But also, this is certainly the end of an era.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Yeah. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, has made it very clear in multiple interviews over the last few years that he is a workplace traditionalist. He does think that face-to-face, interpersonal communication and collaboration is the way to run a business. That is really what he's saying here. He's like, we think that the best way to run a company is like this, is in person.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
That is the rationale behind this. But I do think what you are seeing too is that we are seeing some of a bifurcation in terms of return to office. Is it about productivity or is it about saving some of the money that these businesses are wasting on these empty desk chairs?
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
I do think that resume.org, they did this survey where they talked to business leaders, one in three business leaders want workers back in the office due to existing lease agreements. So what is the motivation here? Is it just that Jamie Diamond is looking at all these empty office chairs and going, wow, this is a lot of money I'm wasting. Let's get people back in the office.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Or is it really about increasing productivity?
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Also, if you've been on social media, you've no doubt seen some of the aerial firefighting efforts going on, both from the smaller Nimbler helicopters and the bigger so-called super scooper planes that are swooping in to douse parts of the blaze. Those iconic water bomber planes are actually here on loan from Canada as part of a longstanding agreement between the Canadian and U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Unfortunately, this probably puts future Fed rate cuts a little bit more in doubt because of this absolutely amazing report. You called it the greatest fireworks show since Sydney Opera House. It looks like interest rate cuts are probably a little bit higher. more distant.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Part of the reason is, is that if the labor market is so strong, if the economy is humming along so well, do we really need to cut rates going forward? So if you look at some analysts from the biggest banks in the country, Goldman Sachs now expects just two rate cuts from the Fed in June and December, as opposed to a previously anticipated three.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
And then economists at Bank of America actually believe the Fed is done cutting rates. They see a possibility, actually, at raising rates. Don't say it, Toby. I'm just saying what Bank of America economists are saying right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
So that is why you saw a little bit of this red day to close out the week because all of a sudden this possibility that, wait a second, these rate cuts are not as guaranteed as we thought they were because of just how good these jobs numbers were.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
governments to kind of share aid when fighting, uh, wild fighters. Right now there are two planes in LA being flown by rotation of eight Canadian pilots. Two more are getting folded into the rotation this week, which is good too, because the FBI is currently investigating incident where one of the super scoopers hit a civilian drone damaging it.
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Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
And then the final thing to keep an eye out for this week is Wednesday, the CPI report comes out. And if that comes in higher than expected, if inflation is a little bit more persistent, a little hotter than expected, that is when you might see the Fed. put its already cooling plans for a rate cut completely on ice and just say, hey, we are done going forward because we need to tame inflation.
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Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Sorry about your stock portfolio.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Okay, I hope we get a rate cut before then. I'm on record, rate cut before GTA 6. Up next, do not go anywhere. We have our winners of the weekend coming right up. Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Neil and I picked two stories who had a better weekend than Philadelphia Eagles fans.
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Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Then Midtown's sweet green restaurants rejoice. J.P. Morgan has called every one of its 300,000-plus employees back to the office. It's Monday, January 13th. Let's ride.
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Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Since Neil refused to pick anyone other than the Philadelphia Eagles as his winner of the weekend, I'm taking full control of this segment and doing two winners back-to-back for you all. Plus, I won the pre-show bridge competition, so I was up first anyways. My first winner is cooking up a parlay in seat 14A.
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Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
Delta recently announced a partnership with the sportsbook DraftKings so you can get your heart rate elevated 10,000 feet in the air. The announcement, which came at CES, was a little light on details, but you can be assured that it won't be anything too crazy, seeing as gambling on commercial flights has been illegal in the U.S. since 1962.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
More than likely, the partnership will end up being some less flashy in-flight game or SkyMiles sports betting deal. Still, the prospect of actual gambling in the air is tantalizing for an airline the size of Delta.
Morning Brew Daily
Meta’s Fact-Check Overhaul Scares Advertisers & Delta Teases Gambling Mid-Flight?
A Department of Transportation study from 1996 found airlines could make more than $1 million per aircraft if they offered gambling, which for Delta would come out to $1.3 billion annually. Neil, given those figures, it's no surprise that there have been some attempts to get gambling into the skies over the years, this one being the latest.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
And you can diversify your investments while generating fixed income with a suite of yield accounts. That includes Public's high-yield cash account with an industry-leading 4.1% APY and its bond account at a 6% or higher yield.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Fund your account in minutes or less and earn up to $10,000 when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Get started at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. My winner of the weekend is Liam and Olivia because by the year 2075, there's going to be no one in America named anything else.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
For the sixth consecutive year last year, Liam and Olivia were together the most popular baby names for boys and girls in the U.S., according to a new report from the Social Security Administration. And anyone who isn't Olivia or Liam will probably be named Emma or Noah, which have been the second most popular name for girls and boys, also for six years running.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
The Social Security Administration tracks baby names going back to 1880 and releases its findings every year ahead of Mother's Day. It's a window into how cultural trends, TV shows, and even celebrities influence parents when it's time to name their baby. For instance, between 1880 and 2011, Not a single girl was born named Khaleesi. Since then, because of Game of Thrones, nearly 5,000 have.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Still, no HBO character or any other name is presenting any kind of challenge to Liam and Olivia, who are on a dominant run right now.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
So those are kind of the two dates that you need to have circled on your calendar. As for stocks, they are ripping right now, and they are on track as of now. to open above where they stood on April 2nd, the day that Trump's Liberation Day tariffs were announced. And now a word from our new sponsor, Iterable.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
I just want to defend Sofia's honor here for a second, though, because, yes, it did get kicked out of the top five, but there's actually two iterations of Sofia in the top ten. There's Sofia with a PH at number six, and then there's Sofia with an F at number ten, so... You might say that it's actually, if you combine those two, it is still on top of the world.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
But yes, it is fascinating to see how baby names kind of transition and which are risers and which are fallers. Some of the big risers in the boys category is the name Trey. Truce, which is, you know, just means peace. And it rose 11,000 spots with the 991st rank. So, again, this is not necessarily a name that you're going to be seeing in your classrooms anytime soon.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
absolutely i'm not even 20 less than that at this point and then also some big risers for girls were analia scotty which is kind of cool s-o-s-c-o-t-t-i-e marjorie and aliani so definitely some interesting names are climbing up the ranks on the bowie side if you're not a fan of truce you can also go with colson briar or halo which are i
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
I don't know about what I, that's very Gen Z coded, I feel like, naming your baby Halo, but one name that isn't on any of these lists necessarily as big risers that I am bullish on is gonna be Leo, because I think first American Pope just chose Leo as his name. I think we're gonna see a lot more Leos down the stretch.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Yeah, but also the viral storyline from this trip is this supposed gift that Trump is receiving from the royal family of Qatar who want to hand him over this big tricked out Boeing 747 plane for Trump to use as Air Force One. potentially before he leaves office, but then also after he leaves office.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
A lot of people are saying $400 million, which is what this plane is estimated to cost, could be the most valuable gift ever sent to a U.S. from a foreign government, which obviously has led to a lot of discussion around the ethics of this. Does it violate the Constitution? Democrats think so.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Trump's administration thinks that they figured out a way to get around some of the constitutional issues here, but expect to see more dialogue around this big $400 million plane as well.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Then say goodbye to those sneaky, sneaky checkout fees. A new FTC rule cracks down on bait and switch pricing. It's Monday, May 12th. Let's ride.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Neil, you ever see one of those giant domino setups, like a thousand little titles, all perfectly spaced, just waiting for the first push?
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Right. April inflation numbers are probably going to show some of these elevated inflation pressures that came along with tariffs. But again, economists are saying June is probably where they'll mostly show up. But now we've got this pause, so who knows what will happen. Then you mentioned Walmart as well.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
We also get retail sales data for April on Thursday, so we will get a peek into the consumer's wallet as well.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
There's a couple of directorial debuts, too, that you can keep an eye on. Scarlett Johansson is jumping behind the cameras for a movie called Eleanor the Great. It's a story about a 94-year-old who relocates from Florida to New York City. It's a little reverse snowbird action there. And then also Kristen Stewart is making her directorial debut with a film titled The Chronology of Water.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
That's adapted from a Portland, Oregon author's memoir. So if you don't want to see Mission Impossible, you've got those two options as well. Yeah.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
And then also Paige Beckers looked pretty dang good in her preseason, so excited for that storyline as well.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
I mean, people joke and call Quail Hollow Rory McIlroy Country Club because he's nearly 50 strokes apart better than his next closest competitor. So definitely look out for Roars.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
It's so sad. But also, if you had a multimillion dollar horse, you're considering it as a long term investment, not trying to, you know, chase glory with the Triple Crown. So I understand the decision to not run them. But yes, it does take a little bit of the edge off.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
It just doesn't work in a modern marketing. Customers don't follow your perfect flows. Sure, they just added a product to their cart, but then they close the tab to chase their toddler down.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Yep, according to SHRM, you're juggling on average 16 or more platforms. Think hiring, onboarding, training, performance, and compensation.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Clear Company is a full-spectrum HR platform designed to support the entire employee lifecycle. No more endless tabs, no more disconnected tools, and no more reporting headaches.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Millions of users and job seekers already trust Clear Company. So whether you're scaling an empire or need to upgrade your HR playbook, visit clearcompany.com to elevate your talent management. That's clearcompany.com.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
So instead of crossing your fingers hoping your big campaign lands, you can send little marketing nudges that feel handwritten and perfectly timed, even at scale.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Start orchestrating better moments today at endthecampaign.com. New Jersey is still dealing with an old issue as Newark Airport can't seem to shake the system glitches that are leading to delays in safety concerns. On Sunday, another FAA equipment failure led to a temporary ground stop at the country's 13 busiest airport.
Morning Brew Daily
US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
That's on top of last week's outage that caused radar screens to go black for about 90 seconds early Friday morning. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that the problem isn't going away anytime soon with, quote, several weeks of reduced capacity and delays ahead. The equipment that we use, we have to go on eBay and buy parts if one part goes down, Duffy said.
Morning Brew Daily
US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
you're dealing with really old equipment. It's why the Trump administration is looking into a major overhaul of the air traffic control system with plans to replace more than 600 radars and upgrade more than 12 airport towers. The telecom network that underwrites 45,000 flights a day would also be replaced by a wireless and satellite-based system over the next three years.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
With a price tag that would run in the tens of billions of dollars, if Congress can find the funding to make it happen. While a plan to overhaul the aging air traffic control system has bipartisan support, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on the FAA to prioritize repairs at Newark. We need all hands on deck. Make Newark number one. Get it done and get it done fast, he told reporters.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Neil, planes are still flying in and out of the airport, but flights are being scaled back in the meantime while this glitch gets figured out.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Yeah, and part of that groan is I'm just going to put some more numbers on how big these delays are. Travelers have waited on 1,155 flights collectively. That means they've spent more than 296,000 hours waiting, which is equivalent to nearly 34 years. So, of course, you're hearing some groans out of Newark. And right now, operations are down about 33% from historical levels.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
United is uniquely exposed there because they obviously went all in on Newark. They They didn't land a contract with JFK, and so they've said, all right, we're doing Newark. This is our connection to New York City. But it's not going to crush it necessarily.
Morning Brew Daily
US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
And the only reason I say that is some analysts did some estimations and said that the plan cuts over the next 60-day period would result in a reduction of about 30%. 0.5% of United's total second quarter capacity. So it's not like an earth shattering 20, 30%. It is less than 1%, if you believe analysts, which would lower the revenue by about $90 million.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
So again, it is very annoying, mainly from a brand perspective, because now you don't want to fly United. You don't want to fly out of Newark anymore, but it's not going to crush the bottom line again, if these estimates prove to be true.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
If you've ever seen a price listed on a hotel website or driving by emblazoned on a U-Haul truck, that seemed too good to be true. The FTC agrees and is doing something about it. New rules on unfair or deceptive fees are set to go into effect today that prohibits so-called bait-and-switch pricing that deliberately misrepresents the actual price you pay when fees and extras are included.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
According to the FTC's FAQ about the new policies, companies have to prominently display the total costs including all charges or fees the business knows about and can calculate upfront before asking for payment. They also must avoid vague phrases like convenience fees, service fees, or processing fees, and be clear what a charge is for.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
The main culprits here are live event ticket sellers and short-term rental providers. But those sorts of switcheroos happen across all industries, from airlines to cable companies. U-Haul has emerged as an especially egregious offender for listing very low prices nowhere near the final tally. The watchdog group Truth in Advertising filed a complaint accusing U-Haul
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
of engaging in bait-and-switch pricing schemes, saying its 1995 truck rental ads mislead consumers by hiding hefty add-on fees in the fine print. It's the exact type of practice the FTC has been trying to eliminate, and after the rules come into play today, we'll see how businesses start to navigate this new era of transparency.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
That is kind of what businesses count on, the fact that you just get tired. You don't want to go through all the comparison steps, so you just accept it when you reach checkout. You're not going to go through that whole process of running a U-Haul truck and go, you know what? I'm actually not going to pick up the car now that I'm here because of these extra fees.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
So they're counting on you to kind of be bludgeoned down and just accept what they are presenting your way. Some industries, though, have been arguing that this is actually a beneficial setup for consumers. Airlines is the big one here. They call it choose your own adventure. We'll give you these add-on fees so you can customize what level of leisure you want.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Do you really want that extra legroom? Do you want the extra baggage fee? Banks also say that all their overdraft fees that they charge customers is actually to help them discourage overspending in the first place.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
So there are going to be some pushback to this, even though if you put yourself in a consumer's shoes, which we've all been there, this is clearly an annoying part of the market right now.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
It really reads like the U.S. and China went through marriage counseling over the weekend. We concluded that we have shared interests, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said at a news conference in Geneva. What does this mean for businesses? You'll probably see a pulling forward of demand again as trade
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Honestly, first of all, I'm saying great name. Hemanthus, Greek for blood flower, is objectively cool. But secondly, I am asking what it is about your background that makes you uniquely a to tackle this problem. And right now, a dozen people from the startup actually worked at Luminar Technologies, which developed sensors for autonomous vehicles.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
It's a very interesting link because they are trying to use this light detection technology that they think can guide them and help them carry out these medical tests. The actual technique, Raman spectroscopy, works by shining a laser on samples, measuring a small fraction of light that scatters due to interactions with the cell's molecular vibrations.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
This is a very in-the-lab technique that they think they can downsize. It's very Theranos-esque that they want to take something and put it in a very small package and get a lot of diagnostics out of them as well. Fascinating link between LIDAR technology and pet blood sampling, but I think there is something there.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Who do you want to align yourself with, early Facebook investor or Toby and a tapas bar owner? That's the question you have to ask yourself. Up next, we have my winner of the weekend.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
Companies and consumers try to furiously schedule shipments that take place during this 90-day negotiating window. And speaking of 90-day windows, the 90-day pause on elevated U.S. tariffs on most other countries instituted back in April, that is set to expire on July 9th, while this China window extends to August 10th.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
From generative AI and cybersecurity to data privacy, product leaders are managing a whole lot of change. On the pod, you'll learn how your fellow product leaders are navigating innovation at their orgs.
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US and China Agree to Slash Tariffs & Time to Overhaul Air Traffic Control?
They're covering everything from building and implementing generative AI to modern data architecture and machine learning. Stream AWS for software companies everywhere you listen to podcasts. If you're working on building out your portfolio, check out public.com. Public is the investing platform for folks ready to take investing seriously.
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
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US Markets vs the World & OpenAI's ‘PhD-Level’ AI Agent?
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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
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Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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...
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
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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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
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Americans Have Bad Vibes on Economy & UK Demands Apple’s Encrypted Data
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, President-elect Trump said he can't guarantee that tariffs won't lead to inflation.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
To gain entrance, the small private school in Texas made a unique offer to the ACC. It would forego the conference's TV revenue, an average of $45 million per year, and would instead raise the money itself. Luckily, SMU had an ace in the hole, David B. Miller.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Miller is a billionaire oil and gas mogul who helped the school's athletic department raise a record $159 million ahead of its move to the ACC. It's a couple hundred billion dollars, Miller told Yahoo Sports. I'm not losing sleep over it. Meanwhile, everyone is entering uncharted territory here.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
The NCAA expanded its college football playoff from four teams to 12 teams this year, offering more games, more attention, and more TV revenue. The schools are all competing for a $150 million prize pool, with the finalists collecting $20 million apiece.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
All right, so I just want to give everyone the schedule here, what they can expect from the college football playoff. There are four teams that are getting a bye. Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, and Arizona State. A real motley crew there. I love Boise State's blue field, so I'm opting for them in that group.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And then the teams that are playing in the first round game will be hosting them at home fields for the first time. Most of the time existing in the existing playoff structure, there had been neutral sites, but now they're hosting it at home fields, which should be a lot of fun, a lot more energy. Texas is hosting Clemson. Penn State is hosting SMU. Notre Dame is hosting Indiana.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And Tennessee travels to Ohio State. There's going to be a month of college football before the championship game on January 20th.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Well, I've been looking to get into DJing, actually. See, this is why Sage is built for finance pros. They'll use the extra time to optimize their decision-making and efficiency. Well, wait till you hear my sick beats, Neil. Okay, you keep working on that, Toby. But for the rest of y'all, visit sage.com for more info.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
That time is the critical point of this because, uh, The gap between men and women when it comes to housework is one of the biggest among all developed countries. Women in Japan engage in five times more unpaid work than men. That's like child care and elder care. That's according to the IMF.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
So the Japanese government, the Tokyo government, is seeing these stats and saying a lot of women are not having kids probably because they have children. They just don't want to take the burden of more work because they're already working so much. So maybe a four day work week could free up time. You know, we've talked a lot about the four day work week.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
I've never heard of it in the in the same breath as, you know, improving fertility. So this is a new way of of trying that out. Like you said, Tokyo government has tried everything for decades to to stop. kickstart more population, but it just hasn't worked. So we'll see whether this thing coming down in April will boost the population a bit.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Monday through Friday, Monday through Thursday.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
It's Monday. So per tradition, here's your preview of the major events in the week ahead. We've got a big inflation report coming up on Wednesday. The Consumer Price Index is expected to show prices rose two point seven percent in the past year, which is still above typical levels. And part of that bumpy slowdown in inflation we've been seeing for over a year now.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
If it comes in on target, then you can absolutely lock in a rate cut for the Fed's final meeting of the year next week. If it comes in hot, then this is when it gets a little interesting. It could cause the Fed to signal a slowdown in its rate cuts for 2025 and perhaps put this stock market rally on ice.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And then Apple's latest software update, iOS 18.2, is supposed to drop today. It includes improvements to Apple intelligence, such as integrating Siri with chat GPT, allowing you to create gen emojis with text prompts and having AI analyze objects and photos. Which one are you looking forward to the most?
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
I've always talked about iOS updates, and I've just been like, okay, that seems interesting. I'm sure a lot of people will like those and play with the new features. But yeah, this is the first time where I'm like, huh, all right, this is actually going to impact my life a lot.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And then finally, Disney will begin selling tickets on Tuesday to its first Asia-based cruise ship, a Marvel-themed voyage that will depart from Singapore a year from now. Toby, you boarding?
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
It's part of this big push into Asia that Disney is doing. But what kind of cruises are you talking about? Like the big mega cruise?
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
All right, that is all the time we have. Thanks so much for starting your mornings with us and have a wonderful start to the week. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And if you're enjoying the podcast, share it with a friend, family member, or coworker who always gives you a blank stare when you start talking about current events.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Help those people out. And for an even more specific sharing rec, here's Toby.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Okay, let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and Makeup is on that no-day workweek grind. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of morning brew great show today neil let's run it back tomorrow
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Time is absolutely ticking. It looks like there's going to be three potential avenues here. Trump has said that he wants to keep TikTok. TikTok going, but there are limited ways he can do that because this law, banning it, was passed by Congress back in April. So Congress would need to pass another law to remove the ban, and it was passed in bipartisan fashion.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
So there is a lot of support among lawmakers. So one thing Trump could do is tell Apple and Google through their app stores that he won't enforce the ban. And it would be this handshake agreement where he would just be like, guys, I'm not going to send the DOJ after you can keep TikTok in your app stores. We can keep this thing going even with the ban. ostensibly from Congress.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
But that doesn't that would probably spook Apple and Google. The second option here is that TikTok appeals to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court files an injunction blocking the ban from going into effect before January 19th. And then the final option is for TikTok to sell it to a U.S. company or a U.S. investor group.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Oh, my God. Can you believe what happened in baseball last night? Superstar Juan Soto has reportedly signed a 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets, the richest contract in professional sports history. It surpasses the 10-year, $700 million contract Shohei Otani received from the Los Angeles Dodgers last year. And unlike Otani, who deferred 97% of that money for a decade last year,
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
That does not seem likely, even though people like Steve Mnuchin, the former Treasury Secretary, have started to make bids, but China will likely block the sale of this app from ByteDance. So three not great options for TikTok, and we're only a little over a month away from this being banned.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
They're literally going to have to throw a Hail Mary to either the Supreme Court or Trump. So we'll see what happens. I mean, January 19th is just around the corner. Let's move on to the major developments in Syria. On Sunday, Syrian rebels seized the capital city of Damascus, capping off a surprise offensive that has toppled the authoritarian Assad family dynasty.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
that had ruled Syria for more than 50 oppressive years. As the rebels were taking Damascus, President Bashar al-Assad resigned and fled to Moscow, where he was granted asylum, Russian state media said. Syrians in the country and many others in the diaspora celebrated the end of Assad's brutal dictatorship.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
It's a seismic turn of events that could shake up the geopolitical order in the Middle East and beyond. In particular, Assad's fall is a stinging blow to Russia and Iran, which had both backed his regime and poured tons of financial resources into keeping him in power.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
But when he needed them the most, Russia and Iran weren't there to save him, bogged down by other conflicts such as Russia's war in Ukraine. Among Western leaders, the feeling now is relief, but also apprehension about a power vacuum.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
President Biden called it a moment of historic opportunity for the long suffering people of Syria to build a better future for their country, but added it was also a moment of risk and uncertainty. Toby, markets didn't really have a strong reaction to this. Syria doesn't produce much oil and its economy has shrunk mightily from sanctions and civil war.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
But the long term global ramifications of this are big, given all the power players involved.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Soto is deferring none of it. Toby, the best part about this for Soto is he won't have to spend any of this money on movers. He's coming to the Mets from the Crosstown Yankees.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Yeah, this is just another ho-hum, very solid jobs report. Just think Juan Soto hitting a gapper, you know, taking a double. So the job market is perfectly fine. It is expected to slow a little bit next year. J.P. Morgan expects that the U.S. will add 113,000 jobs a month next year, which is down from about 180,000 this year. So we are mellowing out in the job market.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
But the unemployment rate, even at 4.2 percent where it's now, that is considered, you know, historically low. You want it in the low 4 percent range. That's basically everyone who wants a job can get a job in the economy. Markets reacted perfectly well. You know, the S&P shot up to its 57th high of the year. It is now up 28 percent this year. So markets were absolutely not disturbed at all.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
This is just another, you know, dinger to left.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
That is a good point. Jerome Powell won't be needing to put up an open to work banner on LinkedIn come January 20th. In an interview with NBC News yesterday, President-elect Trump said he wouldn't seek to boot Powell from his role as chair of the Federal Reserve, despite his hostility toward Powell during his first term in the White House.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
I don't see it, Trump told Meet the Press in his first sit-down broadcast interview since winning the election. In regards to firing Powell, Trump said, I think if I told him to, he would, but if I asked him to, he probably wouldn't. Trump allowing Powell to continue on as the US's top economic policymaker.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
should alleviate some concerns about the Fed's independence under a second Trump administration. During his campaign, Trump wondered aloud whether he should have influence over the Fed's interest rate decisions, spooking investors who consider the Fed's independence from short-term political matters fundamental to stable markets.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
So, Toby, looks like we're going to be hearing a lot more from Jay Powell for at least another couple of years. His term ends May 2026.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And then another major takeaway from that interview on Meet the Press yesterday was that Trump was posed by the interviewer, the interviewer brought up that, you know, the broad consensus among economists is that his tariffs, you know, he's pledged 25% tariffs on all products from Mexico and China, 10% additional tariffs on China. that those will raise prices.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And the interviewer asked, like, what do you think of that? And he's like, I can't guarantee that they won't raise prices. I can't even guarantee tomorrow, he said. So that's sort of an admission that, you know, the broad... economic view that tariffs will lead to higher prices, he's sort of acknowledging that. So we'll see.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
You know, he continued to pledge that he will slap tariffs on, those are major tariffs on those countries come his first day in office. So I think we should all pretty much brace for that. It is the end of an era, Taylor Swift played her final show on the Heiress Tour last night in Vancouver.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Spanning nearly two years and 152 shows across five continents, it'll be remembered as a cultural phenomenon on par with Beatle, Mania or Woodstock. It was also a economic juggernaut. Even when the first leg ended in 2023, the Heiress Tour was already the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning more than $1 billion across 66 shows.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Tack on an additional 86 shows this year, and the final haul is estimated to be $2.2 billion. Meanwhile, the Aris Tour drove a surge in consumer spending that helped global economies recover from the pandemic. The 2023 leg contributed $4.3 billion to U.S. GDP, while other countries cited Swift shows for boosting inflation in their official government data.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Toby, the Aris Tour had this grip on culture and commerce that we may not see again for a long time. What do you think its main legacy will be?
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Yeah, there was was this new term that was coined, which was Swiftonomics. And it was just the insane secondary impacts of her tour and all of her various business lines. You know, over the course of this tour, Taylor Swift was named Time Person of the Year. She became a billionaire, the first billionaire person who became a billionaire just because of her music.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And she wrote this book, which we didn't even talk about, but she wrote this book selling it directly through Target. It sold 814,000 print copies over Thanksgiving weekend. It's the biggest nonfiction book release of the year. It is the second biggest nonfiction book release of all time. Even if it was riddled with grammars and typos, it seemed nobody cared.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
She put out this movie, the Aristar movie, which which shattered all records for concert films. Her merch sold like crazy. She sold a half a billion dollars in merch. So she is an economy unto herself.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I pick two things that picked up the tab at brunch. I won the pre-show Taylor Swift karaoke competition, so I get to go first. And my winner is Southern Methodist University football team, who earned the final spot in the first ever 12-team college football playoff, which was revealed yesterday.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
Unlike us humble podcasters, you guys do give financial advice every day, both within and outside your organizations.
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TikTok Ban One Step Closer to Happening & Taylor Swift's End of An Era
And sneaking into the 12-slot SMU's edition meant the perennial juggernaut Alabama was on the outside looking in. SMU's rise highlights the influence of outside money in college football. A one-time powerhouse in the 80s, SMU has been rebuilding its program and during all the conference realignment in recent years, decided it wanted to join the Atlantic Coast Conference.
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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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Let's wait until Thursday. I'll sit on them.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
That's the kind of sidekick I need. Less utility belts and spandex, more spreadsheets.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
File before April 15th at taxact.com.
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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Stock Market Loses $6 Trillion in Two Days & Minecraft Movie Scores Big
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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Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, ski patrollers are striking against a veil, and it's about as chaotic as a beginner pizzaing down a black diamond.
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Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Some other winners include Demi Moore getting her first major acting award for The Substance at age 62. and Nikki Glaser's really funny monologue, which lightly roasted a bunch of the Hollywood stars in attendance, though they did not get it nearly as bad as Tom Brady when she filleted him on Netflix last year.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Toby, the Golden Globes are seen as the boozy, less uptight opener for the Oscars, which comes in March. What were your highlights?
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Yeah, but I'm not even nowhere near as snobby as far as tuna is concerned as you. I didn't know this about you.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
I know. Remember last year when he was making this amazing run as a 16-year-old? He was talking about how much he loves kebabs, and he took over the dart world then. And to follow this up, to follow his loss up last year and win this year is just propelling this sport to the forefront even more. You know, last year had a record 4.8 million people watching the final.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
It's going to be even more this year. Littler was the most searched athlete in the UK on Google last year. And I think Not necessarily maybe it was the most popular one, but it was the biggest delta between I've never heard of this guy, and now he's everywhere. So kudos to him, and it's really cool to see darts go mainstream.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
I mean, it is very fun to watch, and it's maybe even more fun to go watch
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
in person there is uh this this final has become just a staple of the christmas and new year's calendar in london it's called alley pally alexandra palace in london they sold 90 000 tickets in the summer for this event within 15 minutes so this is an absolute bucket list thing that i have to go to because they all dress up they all get really rowdy and it seems super fun littler what he's 17 he's going to be in this sport for decades
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
I think that was just your mom trying to get you to eat less dessert over Christmas.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
I'm wondering what peak dart age is.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
It is Monday. Hey, Don't blame the messenger. So here are the major events you should know about in the week ahead. Many of you in the Midwest are listening to this in your PJs because you've got a snow day. The biggest winter storm of the season pummeled the region yesterday and overnight tonight, giving cities like Kansas City rare blizzard conditions.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Today, it's moving east into the mid-Atlantic, where it's expected to dump Washington, D.C., with its biggest snowfall in years tomorrow. Nearly 4,500 flights were delayed and 2,000 canceled in and out of the U.S. as of early this morning. And expect that number to rise today.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
I know. No, seriously. All right, the weird gadgets are coming as CES, the world's largest consumer electronics trade show, kicks off in Vegas today. More than 140,000 people are descending on Sin City to get a firsthand look at what futuristic devices are coming to a Best Buy near you. And your jaw is going to drop when you hear this, but the main theme will be a... AI.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Expect to see AI infused in every type of product, including TVs, cars, wearables, even bathroom appliances and massage chairs. But be wary of the hype. Remember, the buzzy product at last year's CES was Humane's AI pin, which flopped spectacularly.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
You can really build out a solid multi-asset portfolio, which is great for anyone looking to diversify without jumping between a bunch of apps.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
You won't have the chance to lose any money in the stock market on Thursday because it'll be closed as part of a national day of mourning for former President Jimmy Carter, who died over break at age 100. Many people were surprised that Wall Street would shut down when a former president dies because it's so rare to do that outside of federal holidays.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
But it has been tradition since at least 1865 when records show the New York Stock Exchange closed to honor Abraham Lincoln after he was assassinated. The last time stock exchanges shut down for a deceased former president was in December 2018 to honor the late George H.W. Bush.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
2025, holy moly, almost messed up right there to honor Jimmy Carter. There's lots of high-stakes football this week. The college football playoff semifinals are here with Notre Dame facing Penn State on Thursday and Texas taking on Ohio State the following night. And then the NFL playoffs begin this weekend with the wildcard round.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
The Kansas City Chiefs, once again, are favored to win the Super Bowl. And if they do it, they'd be the first team ever to win the championship three years in a row. Toby, I need your picks.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
You're a big Eagles guy. I'm a big Eagles fan. We play the Packers at 4.30 on Sunday. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful start to the week, the first full week of 2025. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
And New Year, same pitch, to ask you to share this pod with your family and friends so they can be more informed about things like expensive tuna, congestion pricing, and darts. If you need a little assist for a sharing idea, Toby's got you covered.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and makeup is still stuck in the lift line. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Unless you want to sweat off those extra brownies, in which case maybe a harder to use platform is what you're after.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. If you want to drive in to crash a podcast taping of Morning Brew Daily, it's going to cost you even more than the Lincoln Tunnel toll. Starting yesterday, New York City began implementing congestion pricing, becoming the first U.S. city to tax drivers taking their car into the central business district.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
New York's $9 charge applies to vehicles entering anywhere south of 60th Street in Manhattan, home to popular tourist areas like Broadway, theater, and Soho, as well as major office districts like the flat iron one the brew uses as its HQ. It has been a roller coaster to get to this point, which highlights how controversial this plan is.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Congestion pricing was set to begin last June before its one-time champion, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, scrapped it in what critics call a political ploy to help Democrats' chances in the election. After November's election, Hochul said, you know what, I'd like a take back and gave it the green light, but at a reduced rate, nine dollars instead of the original 15.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Toby, this congestion pricing plan has invited is a hot dog, a sandwich level debate, but with a lot higher stakes. If it succeeds in New York, you can bet other U.S. cities are going to be taking notes.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
One of the great New Year's traditions, along with the ball dropping in Times Square, is the first tuna auction of the year at the famed Toyosu Fish Market in Tokyo, and this year brought the goods. Over the weekend, a 608-pound bluefin tuna sold for $1.3 million, making it one of the priciest tuna ever to be sold in the history of sushi, equivalent to $2,100 per pound.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Right. Let's talk about what it set out to do. What are the goals of congestion pricing? Well, one of them is to reduce traffic in lower Manhattan. New York City was the most congested city in the entire world last year, according to a study from Enrix drivers lost one hundred and one hours on average sitting in traffic in the city last year. So reducing traffic, reducing emissions is
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
clearing up the roadways, a major goal. Another goal on the other side of that is for the toll to raise money for non-private vehicle options like transit, buses, subways. The idea is to raise $15 billion to apply to funding for those measures. So it's kind of this two-sided coin where we have reduced congestion, reduced traffic deaths.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Hundreds of people lost their lives in traffic accidents in New York City last year. On the other hand, it's hoping to raise money to fuel transit options. And That, you know, that's the goals of proponents.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
And opponents, on the other hand, they came from the suburbs, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, who say it's just a money grab by New York City and another tax on people who have been hurting from inflation.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see whether that price point of $9 actually deters people from going into the city. You already have to pay more than $15 just to enter on the bridges and tunnels. And New York City is not the first city in the world to do it. It's the first city in the United States. London, Stockholm, Singapore are among the cities that already have congestion pricing.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
And we can look at London to see what maybe will come to New York City. London implemented it in 2008. And three, that was $8 per day. Now it's up to $18. The year after congestion pricing came to London, congestion inside the zone was reduced by 30%.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
But it looks like it's normalized because in 2022, before New York City became the most congested city, London was in 2022, a full almost two decades after congestion pricing. So people adjust their habits.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
The buyer was a Michelin-starred Japanese sushi restaurant chain, which said it would put the tuna on the menu at 13 of its restaurants. Toby, $2,100 per pound. Do you think you'd be able to tell the difference if I gave you that tuna versus sashimi-grade one I pick up at Whole Foods?
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
No, it did not. I mean, what was the word of the year, the Oxford Dictionary word of the year for 2024? It was brain rot. have their guard up for anything that would add to the brain rot that we are seeing on the internet. This AI quote unquote slop that has proliferated since chat GPT was released in 2022. But I will tell you there is backlash now, but I do feel like this
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
kind of, this is coming, you know, this guy, this meta exec gave the interview to Financial Times saying that, you know, look, we want to increase engagement on our platform. And one of the use cases of generative AI so far that has been proven popular with people is that companionship with AI bots and finding friends in virtual avatars.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
And their goal at Meta is to keep you on the platform as much as possible. So if they find that you're engaging with these avatars, these AI bots, then they're going to keep releasing them. Now, this was obviously sloppily done. They released 28 of them in 2023, slowly deleted them. But then this interview sort of picked up quickly.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
people started searching for them after this interview to see like, whoa, what's he talking about? I think the fact that a company would actually put its thumb on the scale and introduce more AI slop and more AI accounts to people on social media was a reason for the big backlash.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Not a lot of shredding. A lot of standing. And I think there's a decent amount of schadenfreude among people here on the East Coast who don't ski, who are looking at those lift lines. People being like, whoa, why would you do that in the first place? This is all skiing is. But no, there is a lot of animosity toward Vail even before this strike happened. It's valued at nearly $10 billion.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
It's bought up all of the ski resorts in all the big ski resorts in North America. It owns 42 of them across this continent worldwide. Australia and Europe. And then it sort of revolutionized the industry by in 2008 releasing what's called the Epic Pass, which you can buy and it gives you access to all of Vail's resorts. And compared
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
to the walk-up price of $328 at Park City Mountain, people are opting for the Epic Pass. 75% of visitors to all of its Vail ski areas will be using a Pass product. So Vail is seen as sort of the evil corporate overlord in the fact that this union is asking for $2 increase in starting wages, and Vail has, you know, sort of
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
rejected that, saying that it over the past four years, they say that they've increased wages by 50 percent for ski patrollers. And that has been more than inflation. So it's kept more than kept up with the cost of living. So those are the sort of context and dynamics at play when you see this fight between the ski patrollers who cannot afford to live in these
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Uber expensive ski towns that are becoming only more expensive. And Vail Resorts, which is a publicly owned behemoth, which is valued at nearly $10 billion and brought in more than $250 million in profit last year.
Morning Brew Daily
Congestion Pricing Hits NYC & Meta Backtracks on AI Characters
Welcome to Winners of the Weekend, the segment where Toby and I picked two things that picked up the tab at brunch. I won the pre-show game of Duck, Duck, Goose, so I get to go first. And my winner is everyone handed a trophy at the Golden Globes last night, which kicked off awards season by honoring the best of movies and TV.
Morning Brew Daily
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In a box office year dominated by sequels, it was originality and ambition that took home the hardware at the Golden Globes. The Spanish-language trans musical Emilia Perez won Best Film, Comedy, or Musical, while The Brutalist, a 215-minute epic starring Adrian Brody that includes an intermission, won Best Film, Drama.
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Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
That's join.whoop.com slash brew daily to get started.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Yeah, just a little context. Index is still down more than 7% from its all-time high, but what a run we have been on. And a lot of it has been led by retail investors. According to Vanguard, net buyers of stocks outnumber net sellers by a ratio of 4 to 1 amongst self-directed investors over this last little run we've been on.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
So that is the retail traders, the Reddit people saying, hey, buy the dip, which has become a very popular refrain. And the S&P 500 Vanguard ETF actually saw $21 billion in inflows last month, which is the most in its 15-year history. So clearly, it was institutional investors kind of rotating out, whether it was by algorithmic trades, just automatically making adjustments here and there.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
But retail investors said, hey, we haven't seen... Obviously, that 9.5% dip we saw on Liberation Day may have been overstated a little bit and have been piling into stocks. Again, it's just a one-month sample size. I feel like Warren Buffett's on my shoulder right now saying...
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
So and now a word from our sponsor, Plant It Out. Neil, you ever watch one of those cooking shows where they take a plain old dish and somehow turn it into something magnificent?
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
zoom out, which he actually did talk a little bit about it, that these recent market volatility haven't been anything in the grand scheme of things, but it has been interesting to see retail investors step up to the plate here. My winner of the weekend is Tim Friede because he might have the most valuable blood known to mankind. Friede is a man who quite simply loves letting snakes bite him.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Over 18 years, Friede has injected himself with venom more than 650 times and endured roughly 200 bites from the deadliest snakes in the world. As such, his blood now contains powerful antibodies that, according to a landmark study published on Friday, provided various levels of protection from 19 different deadly snake species.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
He started on this crazy journey in 2001 and nearly gave up until he met Dr. Jacob Glanville, the CEO of biotech startup Centivax, who knew how to turn his hardcore science experiments into a viable protection from snake bites, which, to be clear, is a major worldwide issue.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
According to the New York Times, snakebites kill 140,000 people a year and injure nearly half a million, figures that are both thought to be vast underestimates. So if Freedy's blood does yield a mythical sort of universal anti-venom, that is a lot of lives saved. I'm really proud that I can do something in life for humanity, Freedy said, for people 8,000 miles away that I'm never going to meet.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Neil, have you heard of a more hardcore story?
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And what's crazy is that the way anti-venom is made hasn't been changed in over 130 years. We still do it the same way, which is you inject a small amount of venom into a larger mammal like a horse, a camel, or a sheep, and then you harvest the antibodies that were produced in response to that injection of venom. And you're right.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Well, that's what Planet Oat does for your morning coffee or your cereal or whatever you're sipping, slurping, or blending. It's not just oat milk. It's an upgrade to your life.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
The issue is that most antivenoms are so particular to the snake that they treat and that there's no universal application of them. And so if you can find this you know, super blood that Freedy has created over time through just sheer force of will, by the way, he's like, I am not a real scientist. I was just doing the best I could with no real end in sight either.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Cause he, a few scientists had sampled his blood before, but they never made any strides. So if it wasn't for this magical pairing of, you know, Dr. Glanville with Freedy, we wouldn't have this anti-venom at all. So just truly a crazy story. A lot of people over the week going, this is the most hardcore I've ever seen, but it looks like Freedy is going to save a lot lives.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Yeah, they think there's a 98% chance of rates being left unchanged. And a big reason of that, we kind of glossed over it in that earlier story, was that very strong April jobs data, 177,000 jobs added, which was ahead of an expected 133,000 jobs.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
So despite everything that's going on with the economy, again, that underlying data seems pretty solid, which is enough for Jerome to say, let's keep things where they are.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And if you're looking for something without the sugar, the unsweetened version has zero grams, but still tastes like it's a cheat day.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Which is why jury selection is going to be difficult because most of the potential jurors are going to know who Diddy is and know something about the case. And so the judge will determine who gets excused for cause for knowing too much or having preconceived notions about things.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
While attorneys for both sides will also have a certain number of strikes when it comes to jurors, which can be used strategically as well. So all this to say, before we actually get into the case, jury selection is going to be a major storyline.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Personally, I hope hair and makeup tune in to learn a thing or two. But yes, pretty excited to see the fits this year, as always, especially coach here, Coleman Domingo, who absolutely just rips fits every single time he walks out on the red carpet.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
My vote is for Ralph Fiennes. I hope he becomes pope this year.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Well, honestly, just all the game sevens that we've gotten recently across hockey and NBA as well. It's just been a lot of entertaining stuff, though I'm not a fan of in the NBA playoffs. There was a game seven that started after the next round had started. The NBA playoffs are just too dang long.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Would not recommend putting it on your grilled cheese, though. Gotta draw the line somewhere.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
It doesn't feel real. I mean, I can't imagine a world without Buffettisms, without tuning into his annual shareholder meeting. It really is just, he defines such an era of capitalism in America. He's been CEO for 55 years. He's the longest serving CEO of any S&P 500 company. And he deserved his 10-minute standing ovation because let's run through the scorecard a little bit.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Berkshire Hathaway has returned. 5.5 million percent since 1964. That's a 20% annual compound growth rate versus 39,000 percent return from the S&P 500 over the same period. So the stat that I have to quote is Berkshire could fall 99%, and he will still have outperformed over the length of his career.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And then talk about the power of compound investing, which is just such a tenet of Warren Buffett's philosophy. 96% of his net worth was accumulated after his 65th birthday. So that's just how compounding works. So there are so many insane stats. You can just keep going down. But I think that just shows how much of an outperformer he really was over his storied career.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And then looking ahead, Greg Abel has a lot of questions that he has to answer as he steps into the CEO role. Namely, what are you going to do with this $350 billion pile of cash that Warren Buffett had been reluctant to deploy over these last few years of volatility? Who knows how he's going to actually use that? He's obviously in a good position.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
A lot of CEOs would love to have that cash pile to work with. But questions about, is he going to bring a different risk tolerance? Is he going to have more preference for industries that Buffett typically avoided? Is he going to dive deeper into tech or something like that? And then also, is he going to continue this Woodstock for capitalists?
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Is the shareholder meeting going to have the same sort of magic it did under Buffett and Munger? These are all questions that Abel has in front of him. But by all accounts, he's a very good operator of businesses. Who knows how he is as a capital allocator? So that's maybe one of the biggest question marks as well. So an enviable position to some, but also a lot of weight on your shoulders.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Starbase, the sprawling command center Elon Musk uses for SpaceX launches of its towering Starship rocket, is now officially a town. After a near-unanimous vote, 97% in favor from a pool of mostly SpaceX-connected residents, Elon Musk's outpost near Brownsville, Texas, has incorporated as its own municipality.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Then Elon Musk's rocket base in South Texas has gotten so big, it's officially become its own city. It's Monday, May 5th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
That means Starbase USA now has the power to levy taxes, write zoning laws, and if a pending bill passes, even shut down local public beach access during launch activities. For Elon, the move offers a way to streamline operations and possibly reduce the logistical friction that comes with being a very big private company that has huge ambitions.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
For example, SpaceX has not been able to provide enough housing for workers who want to live near its headquarters. especially after a recent attempt to build more was rejected by the county. So its new identity should help fix that since state law gives wide latitude to municipalities in Texas.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Critics do worry about blurring lines between private ambition and public responsibility, especially if Starbase uses its new authority to sidestep environmental concerns or cut residents off from a previously public destination for waves and sunshine. But for many in the area, the trade-off looks to be worth it,
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
3,400 jobs in a budding tourism economy of people who want to stop by and watch Starship in action were enough to win over most of the dissenters, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
This incorporation isn't just this get out of jail free, free pass to do anything you want, any regulations that you want, but it does give you a lot of unique authority to kind of set the rules in your developmental area, so zoning, building projects, even just... more normal aspects of life, all fall under the purview of now a mayor who is a vice president at SpaceX.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
So that's where people say, is this really like this? There has to be a conflict of interest here when the literal mayor of a town is also a VP at this private company. But one of the big sticking issues was I mentioned this beach because beach access is something that should be available to a wider population.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And so if you grant control over that ostensibly to a private company, then you are depriving a public population of going and tanning and going and having a beach day, which has been a big issue because SpaceX has these big launches, they test the rockets, and they need to shut down the local highway every time they do something like that.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
So a local judge has said, hey, we've been working with you, SpaceX. There's no need to go to this step. So expect that to be kind of a hallmark issue in this push to make a public place into a private enclave for a company like SpaceX. Let's move on. When is the last time you went to see a Marvel movie? Or better yet, when was the last time you went to see a Marvel movie and actually enjoyed it?
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Unfortunately for Disney, your answer probably dates back to Avengers Endgame in 2019, if you had an answer at all. But Kevin Feige, the brainchild behind the whole interconnected web that makes up the Marvel Cinematic Universe, thinks he's figured out a plan to make Marvel good again. Stop making TV shows and start making good movies.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
According to the Wall Street Journal, Feige had recently told colleagues that keeping up with all the company's new movies and TV shows was starting to feel less like entertainment and more like homework. As the latest Marvel film, Thunderbolt, debuted to a tidy $165 million worldwide, you can see the inklings of that strategy starting to pay off.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Thunderbolts doesn't feel like most of the rest of the heavily CGI'd fare that MCU typically serves up. It's a smaller fare both in terms of feel and in name recognition. Gone are Captain America and Iron Man and in their place steps Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova in a JV squad of anti-heroes that even the most ardent of comic book fans would be hard-pressed to recognize.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
But critics and fans actually like this new Marvel movie precisely because it feels distinct. Thunderbolts director Jake Schreier said, when I first started on the movie, Kevin Feige said, make it different.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
It all adds up to a movie that feels like a breath of fresh air for a cinematic universe that was becoming woefully stale and represents a glimmer of a new Marvel, one that makes fewer TV shows and more standalone stories that don't require an encyclopedic knowledge of previous MCU fodder released on Disney Plus to actually understand.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And part of the greatness of the MCU is also its biggest vulnerability in that Feige had immense creative control over everything that went through the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And so he would have the final creative say. He would have the final editorial say. He would be in the edit bay with people and saying, hey, we need to reshoot this. We need to cut this.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And so as you expand, you start to see these demands on his attention where quality starts to fall. And the quote that came out of this big Wall Street Journal piece was, The strategy just became expansion, expansion, expansion. And when there's only one Kevin Feige, that becomes an issue because he's a major bottleneck as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And he has told friends that he felt that the need to be an excellent corporate citizen and step up to the plate when they want to execute this expansion strategy. And it was just very obvious to anyone who went to see a Marvel movie that the quality just went off a cliff. I was talking about my experience seeing Ant-Man and Quantumania, and it was like the worst movie I've ever seen.
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Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
And that was supposed to be this next big setup for its next big expansion, set up the big bad villain. So it's just one of those things where it was too much of a good thing. And so Thunderbolts is trying to be a much different feel, a much different strategy, stop relying on the – on the big named characters of Yor and try something different.
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Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
That being said, they do still have, you know, the heavy hitters waiting in the pipeline. Robert Downey Jr. is coming back as Dr. Doom somehow in their next movie. So they are trying to recapture some of that old magic, but it's been a rough couple of years for Marvel to say the least. Up next, we have our winners of the weekend coming your way.
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Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion.
Morning Brew Daily
Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
Yeah, now Mexico accounts for about 30% of all global beer exports and ships more than double the amount of beer as any other country. And of course, a lot of that beer ends up across the border. 97% end up in the United States. And Modelo is the top selling beer in America, not the top Mexican imported beer, the top beer in America where it's been since it surpassed Bud Light back in 2023.
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Warren Buffett Plans His Retirement & Welcome to SpaceX City?
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
He kept the show moving, was funny. So I think this will be seen as a relative success for the Oscars.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
Expansion is the name of the game for them. Expand, they have.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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Crypto Cheers For US ‘Crypto Reserve’ & RIP Skype
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
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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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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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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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I think that it was pretty reflective of the music, you know, of the last year. The one artist that was kind of missing from some of these awards was Taylor Swift, but you know, she has won plenty in the past. I also can't believe that Beyonce had never won album of the year.
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Like that is something that never has really, it's just insane that someone nominated as much as her has never won the top award. And it was a country album too, to, to boot. So pretty cool that she finally got over that hump. Another big winner. I definitely,
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do say if you didn't pick Beyonce, you would pick Kendrick Lamar because, I mean, he has just wiped the floor with Drake in this rap battle. When you have your diss track winning, you know, record of the year awards, that is a very tough look. Remember, Drake doesn't even put his music up for Grammy consideration, so it's just... Absolutely a one-sided fight at this point so far.
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85% of the time, it does have an asterisk, though. Phil has longevity on his side. He's been in the prediction game since 1887 compared to Chuck's 1981. But still, if you want accuracy, Staten Island Chuck is your guy.
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So glad to see Chapel Roan, you know, acknowledged as well. So the final band that you didn't shout out that is, I don't think a lot of people expected to win a Grammy in the year of 2025. That is the Beatles whose song Now and Then, which remember used AI technology to bring back some of their voices. That took home best rock performance.
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So pretty cool for, you know, the Beatles to still be winning awards.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
My winner of the weekend is Rebecca Yaros because the Romantasy author's third book is approaching Harry Potter levels of hype. Her first book, Fourth Wing, became a viral sensation after TikTok took a liking to her romance epic set at a military academy for dragon riders. Her second book, Iron Flame, kept the hype going, but it is her third release, Onyx Storm, that is smashing sales records.
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The book sold more than 2.7 million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling adult novel in the last 20 years. Now, I might have over-exaggerated a bit when I said Garros is approaching Harry Potter levels. The last book in J.K. Rowling's series sold 8%. 8.2 million copies in its first 24 hours.
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But still, Yaros laps similar adult novels like Colleen Hoover's It Starts With Us, which moved 810,000 copies in its first week. However, this is Dragon Mania we are talking about here, Neil. Yaros' book currently holds the top three spots on both the New York Times' hardcover bestseller list And Amazon's top selling fiction list. It is a force of nature, Neil.
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Well, she's queen, but then her co-queen is definitely Sarah J. Moss as well. She released that hugely successful series, A Court of Thorns and Roses. I always call it A Court of Roses and Thorns. Sarah J. Moss was actually the best-selling author in the United States last year. She sold 7.7 million copies. So it definitely is. We're in the romantic moment right now.
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It is evocative of, you know, the days of Harry Potter, the days of Twilight. We really haven't had these big cultural events around book releases in a while now. But when you see people dressing up in costume and driving from hundreds of miles away just to go to a book release party, it does seem like we're in a similar, you know, Twilight, Harry Potter moment.
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It's all about Staten Island, Chuck. Now a word from our sponsor, Wise. Neil, international travel, fun. International payments, a pain in the neck.
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I mean, Neil, you usually ask me which companies am I interested in seeing their earnings, but I'm looking down the list and I'm just interested in all of them because I do think that tariffs will affect the input costs of a lot of these companies. I mean, you mentioned Guacamole from Chipotle, but Ford is reporting earnings. Let's see how they deal with these tariffs as well.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
So I do think it will be a pretty tariff-heavy earnings cycle that we're entering.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Were you a Sims guy? Yeah, I was Sims City. Sims City? The urban planning version. Yeah, of course. Wait, is there like Roller Coaster Tycoon? Is that within the Sims universe as well or not as much? See, I just never got into it. Although I do think this shows, I mean, we've talked a lot about this trend of nostalgia driving a lot of sales.
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So 25th anniversary, releasing the original version of the game. I think it's another instance of trying to play on people's nostalgia, your nostalgia of growing up, planning cities. So I think it will sell pretty well.
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So I'm taking a very data-driven approach to this pick. Zero emotions. I saw this stat from a sports commentator, Jay Kuda, that reads, in this century, every time the Super Bowl has been played between a team traveling east and a team traveling west, the team traveling west has won. So who is traveling west this year, Neil?
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Since the Super Bowl is in New Orleans, you're Philadelphia Eagles, so congratulations. So far, this has never been disproven, so congratulations. don't be the first ones, you know, break this trend.
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It is a total headache. I'd rather have jet lag than deal with sneaky fees, but that's where Wise Business comes in.
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I want you to share today's pod with all the Beyonce fans out there. I know you've been long suffering. I know it's been a long time coming. So congrats for finally, I'm congratulating you as well as Beyonce for getting over the hump and winning album of the year.
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Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.
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You said it, Neil. This trade war is just a lot bigger than Trump round one. What are some of these goods, though, that are going to be affected? What might be more expensive now that this trade war has kicked off? Well, the first one is definitely cars. The New York Times found that a single car can go back and forth over the U.S.-Canada border up to eight times before it hits a U.S.
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dealer's lot. So under these tariffs, you can expect to pay more for your automobile. U.S. buyers might see prices rise about $3,000 on average. Also, remember how food prices and inflation were such a big part of the pre-election rhetoric. Well, grocery store trips are definitely going to get more expensive. Mexico supplies over 80% of U.S.
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avocados, so maybe opt for that salsa instead of guac at your Super Bowl party. But also, fruits, vegetables, meats, those are all shipped in from Canada and Mexico. U.S. homebuilders, too, are going to be affected. 25% of building materials they import come from Canada and Mexico. Tariffs are only going to make building a house and buying a house more expensive. And then finally, energy.
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A quarter of the oil that America consumes per day comes in from Canada. And Trump basically tacitly acknowledged this by only slapping a 10% tariff on Canadian oil and gas because we do rely on them for a good chunk of our oil and gas production. So, yeah, that is the general state of the playing field. Those are some of the prices that you can expect to potentially rise.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
And so if you ask, what are these tariffs affecting? My answer would be pretty much everything.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Then Elon Musk was granted full access to the federal payment system to do some Doze-related cost-cutting. It's Monday, February 3rd. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
And we haven't even really mentioned China that much. We've been focusing on Canada and Mexico, but one provision that will be eliminated that will certainly affect China is this de minimis exemption. That applies to packages that are worth less than $800. And
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It's been a commonly used, I mean, call it loophole for Chinese e-commerce companies, think Xi'an, think Taimu, to directly ship these cheap packages to the United States without paying a duty on them. And so that de minimis exemption is being taken away. So now that they will have to pay for those goods shipped directly to U.S. consumers. But
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Also, Trump removed the de minimis exemption for small packages from going into Canada as well. So say, you know, your grandma in Ontario wants to send you a little birthday present. That will get hit with a 25% tariff as well.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
So even though Trump on the surface wants to target these packages shipped in from Chinese e-commerce companies, it is affecting more than just, you know, your clothing hauls from Xi'an and Timu.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
And then finally, what has been the reaction from the business world? They've been very critical of these tariffs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said tariffs are not the answer. The Wall Street Journal's editorial board penned this widely shared editorial called The Dumbest Trade War in History.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
And then a lot of people were kind of nudging JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who last month went on record and said, hey, get over these tariffs. It might be painful, but they're probably in the interest of national security. So Just get over it. So now a lot of people are kind of tugging on his shirt sleeve and saying, Jamie Dimon, what do you think now that they're actually in place?
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
So hasn't been a lot of support from the business world so far. I guess you still have to wait and see to see if they shake out the way that Trump intends to boost domestic manufacturing. But so far it hasn't been very positive.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Elon Musk just gained unprecedented access to the U.S. government's Venmo account, and he is not happy with who it's been sending money to. Just before the weekend, new Treasury Secretary Scott Pesent gave Musk access to the agency's payment system responsible for doling out trillions of dollars in government spending. That means Musk and his Doge representatives
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
now have deep insight into what is essentially the central bank account of the United States, including the disbursement of Social Security checks and tax refunds.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
The purpose of granting Musk and Doge access is to review the broader payment system and cut down on waste, though the fear is, quote, politically motivated meddling risks severe damage to our country and the economy, as Democratic Senator Ron Wyden wrote in a letter to Scott Besant.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Already, some of that meddling is happening with Elon vowing to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants, which he says have been flowing to fraudulent causes or even terrorist groups. Neil, the dojification of the federal government continues.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Yeah, and then the fear too is whenever it comes to Elon gaining more power on the federal government is a conflict of interest. He can now see payments to government contractors, including those that will compete directly with all the companies that Elon himself owns and runs. And then also this is just another instance of the Trump administration using –
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
trying to potentially control and restrict Congress's power to disperse money. If you can see where all the money is being dispersed to, it wants to, you know, say, let's slash this here, let's add more there. So it is just another instance of them trying to, you know, find and control the flow of money when it comes to disbursements in America.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Also, in some other reshaping the federal government news, Rohit Chopra, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was fired over the weekend. This move was widely expected. People weren't actually sure how he lasted even 12 days in the Trump administration because his agency has been a subject of frequent attacks from Trump and the Republican cohort.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Remember, the CFPB was this entity group created in 2010 post-banking crisis. They were supposed to prevent another banking crisis, but banks have not been a big fan of Chopra or the CFPB in general. They have been the subject of the agency's purview, saying that they haven't protected consumers from widespread fraud.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Oh my gosh, Neil, you're still getting your winter forecasts from Phil? Ditch Phil and instead listen to Staten Island Chuck. Staten Island Chuck is New York City's resident groundhog, and he did not see his shadow on Sunday. That means he is in direct opposition to Punxsutawney Phil. So who should you trust? Well, Phil is right 35% of the time, but NOAA data say that Chuck is right 35%.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
So big banks have been pushing for change, and this is probably the first step in remaking that agency or potentially even dissolving it altogether, that big banks have just not been a fan of it. Chopra.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
Up next, it is our winners of the weekend.
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Companies Brace for US Tariffs & Musk Gets Keys to Treasury Dept.
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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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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Two themes have stood out to me. One, characters like Odysseus' wife Penelope take a very long-term view of things, holding out hope over years that Odysseus will return.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
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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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
It is a sad day for fans of bald, earless men covered in paint. After a 34-year run, the Blue Man Group is playing its last show in New York City this Sunday. The Blue Man Group arrived in NYC in 1991 before the worldwide war. web was even invented, and it leaves a cultural phenomenon after performing 17,800 shows and going through 82,150 gallons of paint as calculated by the New York Times.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
For anyone who hasn't been to a show, the Blue Man Group do a very specific sort of performance art where three silent performers clad in black and Painted Blue catch marshmallows in their mouth, eat Twinkies, and play drums made of PVC pipes.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
But its PE-controlled owner, Cirque du Soleil, said that it had to make the difficult decision to shut down the iconic off-Broadway show as it deals with financial struggles following a 2020 bankruptcy. Fortunately, the end of its NYC show is not the end of the group. You can still catch them in Boston, Vegas, Berlin, or any other of a dozen cities across the globe.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
But Neil, should we go to this show on Sunday? I've been one time. Not in New York City. I've been elsewhere. I think it was in San Francisco when I was growing up. I still remember it. It is incredible. One of my favorite performances. I've never been. I...
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Yeah, and some of the founders of the Blue Man Group gave some pretty great quotes to the New York Times. One founder put, the idea was always to jumpstart other people's weirdness. Part of what New York is all about is be your crazy self, get your freak on, try your thing out. And there's nothing freakier than a man dressed in all blue paint and black just doing... Completely random things.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
And then the other theme, knowledge. Odysseus visits tons of gods and oracles, even goes down to Hades to talk to the dead, all in the pursuit of learning more about how he may complete his journey home.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
It is just absurdist performance art. And they also said people would be like, who's that weird guy over there if one of the founders went out alone dressed in blue? But if they counted a blue trio, suddenly that changes everything. They would ask what's going on. It becomes an event. So they understood the power of putting on a show, the power of being weird.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
And I do think that it has just transcended. People just know the Blue Man Group, even if, like yourself, you've never seen a show. It just became something bigger than just three guys in a dark basement playing PVC pipe drums.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I did look up ticket prices to the show, too. Astronomical. They are extremely expensive. More than Super Bowl? They're on Super Bowl level, essentially. So I don't know if we actually will be able to sneak into this final show.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I am not worried, and I'll tell you why. Because yes, there's a 1.3% chance it hits, but there's also a 98.7% chance that it misses. So I'm choosing to take the glass 98.7% full approach here. But yes, it is interesting that this is technically the second most likely asteroid we've encountered to impact Earth. and it is pretty big. Right now, estimates put it at between 130 and 330 feet long.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Now, that isn't an extinction-level size. It's not going to wipe out the dinosaurs, per se. What it will do, though, is it could wipe out a major city if it did impact that There has been an asteroid that hit back in 1908 around a similar side. It was 130 feet, so on the lower end. And that wiped out a force 800 square miles in size. That is twice the size of New York City.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
So even though it is small, it definitely is mighty and could pack a punch.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
If you want to stay informed about the market without going on an odyssey, head to yahoofinance.com. That's yahoofinance.com. No survivors are expected to be found from the mid-air collision between an American Airlines regional jet and a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter. that shocked the DC community late Wednesday night.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Wine and pizza isn't exactly a pairing on the level of peanut butter and jelly, but it's one that major pizza chains are trying to make a thing. Domino's is collabing with a winemaker out of Australia to release a limited edition red blend that it says pairs quite well with its classic cheese za.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
That comes just months after its rival Pizza Hut introduced a sauce-inspired wine made from tomatoes and infused with natural basil. to its pizza-loving customers. Now, I can't believe I'm saying this, Neil, but I think we're in the middle of a wine and pizza war right now.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
So I was looking at to what other drinks would pair well with pizza because it's not exactly something you do want to pair a drink with. But I did some research. Coffee actually pairs very well with cheese because the tannins in the coffee cut the richness of the cheese a little bit.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I don't know if you'd ever find yourself in a situation where you're having a cup of Joe with a pizza, but it does seem like that cheese and coffee pairing is actually pretty classy.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Well, I think pizza companies have already figured it out. It's like that two liter bottle of Coca-Cola. They offer like, you know, large pizza, two liter bottle of soda deal. So I don't know. I'm still stuck on this coffee thing and I want there to be a pizza coffee war. We've had the pizza wine war.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Let's get Dunkin' and Starbucks, you know, pairing with Domino's and Pizza Hut to see if they can create, you know, that Domino's latte.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
With 67 victims in total, it was the deadliest crash in nearly 24 years, ending an era of unprecedented US airline safety. After a moment of silence to honor the victims before his remarks at the White House, Trump was quick to lay the blame for the crash on DEI hiring policies and his Democratic predecessors, Biden and Obama, though didn't provide any evidence to support his theories.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I totally understand this because she said, I do not want to give birth in the middle of this intersection right now. She had been to the Krispy Kreme earlier that week. She saw it. It was familiar. She says, take me to that parking lot. It's better than right here. Also, the best part of this story, too, is that a lot of her relatives have suggested some middle names for this new baby.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
And they all want her to call him Krispy. Glaze, which would be the sickest nickname ever. Oh, that's Glaze. He was born in the parking lot of Krispy Kreme. I would definitely accept the nickname Glaze.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Well, I...
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Neil wants to be born in front of a Dillard's. The first thing that came to my mind was Home Depot for some reason. I don't know. I feel like there would be Home Depot employees in there that would know what to do. Your nickname would be 2x4.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I want you to share the podcast with someone who, unlike me, completed dry January. Congrats. You did make it. Excited for you now to take on moist February with some MBD podcast listening to get you through the month. Let's roll the credits.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Great show today, Neil. I wished you all well.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Here's what we do know. Audio recordings show air traffic controllers made two attempts to warn the helicopter. The first was made 30 seconds before the crash, the second just a few seconds before. A preliminary investigation by the FAA found that a single controller was handling both helicopters and planes landing at the Reagan Airport when the accident occurred.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Those jobs are typically assigned to two controllers, not just one, the New York Times reported. Neil, air traffic control facilities all over the country have been understaffed for years, but this crash highlights the dangers when you push a fragile system to its limits.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
And then the background context of all this, too, is that there's been a lot of internal upheaval at the highest levels of the FAA right now. Mike Whitaker, the former FAA administration head, resigned 11 days ago under pressure from Elon Musk, actually. And then just yesterday, Trump appointed a new acting head. But again, this is someone who is coming in one day after this accident.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
So it's been unclear who was actually running the FAA for a period of around 10 years. I mean, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was sworn in on January 28th. That was one day before this accident. And if you just zoom out further in the post-pandemic era... A lot of airline experts have warned that U.S. air traffic systems are just over capacity right now.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
There are more flights now than there were in that pre-pandemic period. But a lot of people have retired. There's been a lot of turnover at both on the ground and in operations. So they're saying that this is the nation's air traffic infrastructure is just very stressed right now, is remain very stressed. And this is just potentially a manifestation of that.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Then the U.S. and Europe's economies are heading in two completely different directions. It's Friday, January 31st. Let's ride.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
And they're in such an awkward spot right now because how many more times can the European central bank even afford to cut rates because inflation has also risen for the last three months in a row. It's at 2.4%. It's just creating this uncomfortable backdrop to this very stagnant economy because on the one hand, what are you supposed to do? Your economy isn't growing at all.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
You cannot burden it with higher interest rates. But at the same time, you do not want inflationary pressure to start creeping back up. So they're really in this tough situation. I'm not sure what you're supposed to do if you are the European Central Bank because both roads that you see in front of you lead to not very happy outcomes.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Europe has this very export-oriented economy. They very much send a lot of goods to the United States. And what does that make them? It makes them very exposed to tariffs that come from the United States. A lot of businesses have said, we're pausing investment before we figure out what's going on, what Trump wants. will pass down what policies he will actually institute.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Those policies are becoming clearer because yesterday Trump reiterated that he does plan to put 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada. Those are two of America's top three trading partners. So even though there is some uncertainty when it comes to Europe, it does look like Trump will follow through on some of these tariffs.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
So that just intensifies pressure on the Eurozone because if those tariffs come down, it is not going to be good because it is such uncertainty. an export-heavy economy.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Well, Neil, I did a slightly wet January, but I have a good excuse. I had a friend visit New York City last weekend. We went to a comedy show that, to put it lightly, was the worst comedy show I have ever seen. And I didn't want to leave, so I did the next best thing, which led to the unfortunate end of my dry January. So do not blame me. Blame a really deadbeat audience in a 6 p.m. start time.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I mean, CNN wrote the headline, Chili's is America's hottest restaurant. And I am not one to disagree. That foot traffic stat is really illuminating of what's going on here. Because yes, you can increase profits by raising prices. A lot of fast food companies have done that recently to make up for falling foot traffic. Chili's went and said, Absolutely not. We did not raise prices.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
People just love us, and more people are coming in to our restaurant. Part of the reason why people love Chili's is it just found this groove on the social media. Remember, we talked about TikTok and the rise of its triple dipper platter, which lets you order three appetizers for under $20.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
This is something that has been around for decades, but for some reason, one TikTok video, a couple TikTok videos just hit the algorithm correctly, and all of a sudden, it became... like this meme, but it's not even a meme because people are actually following through on it.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
So it's definitely a story of a little bit of luck, but then I guess some, they just found the right dish at the right price point for the right consumer at the right time here. Our dog of the week is you. UPS, if you want a fast track to the MBD dog of the week section of the show, a good way to get there is to announce you are going to do a lot less business with your biggest customer.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
UPS plans to phase out more than half of the business it does with Amazon over the next 18 months, a move that sent its stock spiraling 14% yesterday. Now, why would you want to wean yourself off the Amazon money faucet that accounted for over $1 billion of UPS's total revenue last year?
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
Amazon is our largest customer, but it's not our most profitable customer, UPS CEO Carol Tomei explained on yesterday's earnings call. Even though the volume is there, margins are tight and it's hurting overall profitability. Neil seems counterintuitive to cut ties like this, but UPS thinks that finally shedding itself of Amazon will allow it to focus on more profitable lines of
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
So slightly wet January. Thank you, though. You can still toast me. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, I've been listening to The Odyssey while I've been working out recently, and I gotta say, it slaps.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
The problem with shedding that too is that you're not just losing revenue, you're also losing volume. So now suddenly you have some empty planes, some empty trucks, you have to realign your entire delivery network. So it's going to affect results. That's why analysts were like, woo, this was going, they knew UPS has been hinting that they were going to phase down. They're Amazon's business.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
I mean, its main rival, FedEx, actually went through the process of completely eliminating Amazon from its delivery network back in 2019. So this wasn't unexpected. It was just the speed at which they're doing this. Analysts said, all right, I don't know how you're going to be able to pull this off because it takes such a big realignment of your entire vast delivery network.
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US, EU Economies Going Opposite Ways? & The Fatal Aircraft Collision in DC
On Public, you can build a multi-asset investment portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
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Find your account in minutes or less and earn up to $10,000 when you transfer your old investment portfolio. Get started at public.com slash morningbrew. That's public.com slash morningbrew. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases. There are no points to calculate, no limits or deadlines. Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone. Das war's für heute.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
That is so many words. But also, Neil, I have to read you some of these quotes from his friends and family after Zaki won. His dad said, he's the goat. I absolutely believe that. And his friend roasted him for missing an easy word late in the competition, saying, I think he cared too much about his aura, but the goat had enough aura left over and took home the dub. Man, I love the spelling bee.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Bis zum nächsten Mal. It's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where Neil and I pick one stock from the week's news that has been upping their creatine intake recently and one stock that is missing out on some gains at the gym. I won the pre-show game of Name That Cloud Formation because Neil didn't recognize high altitude thin icy cirrus clouds, so I am up first.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
My Stock of the Week is the Taco Trade, which has nothing to do with living moss at Taco Bell and everything to do with investors' reaction to President Trump's On again, off again, tariff strategy. Taco stands for Trump always chickens out, a phrase coined by the Financial Times journalist Robert Armstrong back in early May.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
It was recently thrust into the public eye during a White House press conference, when a reporter asked Trump's thoughts on the term, to which he responded, it was a nasty question. It's called negotiation, Trump continued. Regardless of how Trump views his tactics, traders have figured out a way to make money off of them.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Investors are becoming more comfortable with the idea that most of the White House's levies get paused or walked back a short time later. That has allowed traders to buy the dip on the initial tariff news, then reap the rewards if the market bounces back later on the rollbacks. For example, on Friday, May 23rd, Trump threatened tariffs of 50% on the EU, setting the S&P 500 down about 1%.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
But after he walked back those threats on Sunday, stocks surged with the S&P 500 jumping over 2%, a classic case of the taco trade in action. So Neil, even if Trump doesn't like tacos, investors are reaping the rewards.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
You'll notice too, though, that the bounce back needs to be bigger than the initial drawdown or else the taco trade kind of falls apart, which is kind of what we've seen so far. I mean, remember some of the taco relief rallies early after the initial pauses of Liberation Day. Tariffs S&P 500 gained 9.5%. It's third biggest one-day percentage gain since World War II.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
So clearly these bounce backs need to be pretty monstrous if the initial drawdowns are big as well. There is some... People who haven't fully got their arms around the talk of trade, though, because the markets, technically, if this was an efficient market, it wouldn't do anything on the announcements of the tariffs.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
But a shutter still runs through the market every time a new tariff is announced, because there is some concerns that these tariffs might actually stick this time. There always is that concern. And so that is why we are still seeing kind of this rollercoaster motion, even though it is flattening out a little bit.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn. Neil, you ever try to go somewhere using no directions?
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Let's run down through those famous immigrants who have founded famous companies. Elon Musk, born in South Africa, studied at the University of Pennsylvania before founding a million companies, it feels like. John and Patrick Collison, they moved from Ireland, went to MIT and Harvard. Vielen Dank. haben uns diesen Wunsch in der Innovation gegeben, den wir historisch gehalten haben.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
I've been in the car when you do that. And while it's impressive, I don't think it's the optimal way. I've seen you make a wrong turn or two. That's a little what B2B marketing can feel like when you're not using LinkedIn. You've got a destination in mind, decision makers, but sometimes your ad ends up in the wrong place entirely.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Now let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Fire up the DeLorean because Apple's operating systems are about to jump forward in time. Starting in September, iOS 18, Mac OS 15 and others will instead be called iOS 26, Mac OS 26, etc., aligning version names with the calendar year.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Für all you green text truthers out there, yes, rival Samsung has been naming its flagship smartphone releases by their launch year since 2020, so congrats for leading the way, even if you ruined group chats. The rebrand is set to be unveiled at WWDC on June 9th and aims to unify design across devices and hopefully reignite some hardware sales after a post-pandemic slump.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Ja, es fühlt sich wie ein ziemlich kleiner Detail an, den sie nachgehen, wenn sie vielleicht einige breitere Probleme mit dem Thema haben. Ich schaue auch nur auf Open AI und sie haben die schlechtesten Naming-Konferenzen aller Zeiten und sie sind eine der erfolgreichsten AI-Konferenzen derzeit. Du kannst nicht schlechter als sie und sie machen alles gut.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Ich weiß nicht, ob Apple das Problem wirklich löst.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Yeah, this was a little bit of a narrative violation because you do associate France with the cigarette by the water and you just think that they're smoking a lot over there, but that's not true. Yeah, less than a quarter of people actually smoke in the country now. And then also smoking in places like restaurants and nightclubs has been banned since 2008.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Already 1500 municipalities have voluntarily banned smoking in most public places. Es ist einfach etwas, das man mit Frankreich nicht verbunden hat, aber sie schlagen sich aufs Smoking ab. Sie wollen es nicht, dass es um Kinder geht, was verständlich ist.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Und ein letzter Bericht von einer französischen Krankenversammlung zeigte, dass fast 80 Prozent der französischen Menschen in der Lage sind, dieses Verbot in öffentlichen Orten zu verhindern. Also definitiv eines der Dinge, die man nicht unbedingt von unseren Nachbarn aus dem Pond erwarten würde. Aber sie versuchen, das Ausmaß des Smokings in ihrem Land zu reduzieren.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Finally, Cindy Sweeney is selling her bath water. No, I'm serious. The actress is partnering with the soap brand Dr. Squatch to sell a limited edition line of soap bars infused with her actual bath water.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
The joke stems back to a previous ad campaign Sweeney ran with Dr. Squatch, where she addresses the audience from a bubble bath, which of course prompted thousands of comments thirsting for her bath water. You kept asking about my bath water after the last ad. So we kept it, she and Dr. Squatch co-posted on Instagram.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Neil, this is a real thing and I'm going to need to delete my search history off my work computer now after researching this story.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Also, diese Soap ist verfügbar. Es kostet nur 8 Dollar. Wenn du es für irgendeinen Grund hast, werden wir niemandem erzählen, dass man die Sydney Sweeney Bathwater Soap Bar kaufen möchte.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
It's precise, it's efficient, and in the tech space, LinkedIn Ads drives two to five times higher return on ad spend than any other platform.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well. If you're an HR pro, talent acquisition expert or business leader, you're likely a great juggler.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Clear Company is a full-spectrum HR platform designed to support the entire employee lifecycle. No more endless tabs, no more disconnected tools and no more reporting headaches.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Millions of users and job seekers already trust Clear Company. So whether you're scaling an empire or need to upgrade your HR playbook, visit clearcompany.com to elevate your talent management.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Problem gelöst.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Head to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions apply. Maybe one day we'll go 24 hours without tariff news, but yesterday was not that day. If you went to bed at 8.16 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday and woke up at 2.13 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, here's what you would have missed. First, the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Court of International Trade ruled that Trump's usage of a 1997 law to carry out his trade war was not legal. That means the 30% duties on Chinese goods, 25% on Mexico and Canada goods, und all the other reciprocal tariffs sprinkled around the world on Liberation Day were set to be paused.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
The White House immediately clapped back, calling it judicial overreach, and appealed, suggesting it may take the case directly to the Supreme Court if lower courts didn't move fast enough. The message was heard in yesterday a federal appeals court, Ja. Ja. Ja. Und jetzt sieht es so aus, als wären wir auf einer Verschleißung nach einem höheren Gericht.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Aber auch wenn die White House ihre Befehle verliert, sind diese Tarife weit von vorbei. Trump hat ein paar andere Werte, die er ziehen kann.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Yeah, let's go through some of those other ways you can enact tariffs. One that you'll hear a lot of is Section 232. These tariffs were actually left in place because they weren't affected by that initial ruling. And those are the ones that are in place on things like foreign steel, aluminums and autos. Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. There won't be a test on this after.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
It's open book, so you can check this out. It requires a big Commerce Department investigation, cannot simply be imposed on the President's whim at its own discretion like the other tariffs Trump has been using. So he still has the authority to raise those Section 232 tariffs. It just takes a lot longer because you do have to go through the paperwork.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
You do have to do this big Commerce Department investigation. So those are actually a lot more legally sound. They're just not as quick and as nimble as Trump wants them to be. And then the other one is Section 122. This allows you to apply 15% tariffs kind of across the board. However, those would require congressional action after 150 days, so they expire.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Then Trump's tariff agenda is pinballing through more courts than a Djokovic French Open run. It's Friday, May 30th. Let's ride!
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
So again, a little bit more legally sound, but a much shorter term in terms of breadth. And so Trump kind of wants to avoid Section 122. So those are some of the ones that you're going to hear a lot of over the coming days.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Yeah, and it's kind of why we saw a little bit of a muted response from the market yesterday. Futures were up in the morning when we heard that this pause was coming down. Obviously it was rolled back later in the day, but overall the market finished just barely up because it was just a pretty muted response because their investors are not getting too carried away.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
They know that they have these workarounds available to them that allow them to continue to pursue this trade agenda. So it wasn't this big green day that you might have expected on news of a tariff potentially being paused.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Yeah, I was talking with my sister yesterday who bought a house kind of coming out of the pandemic when those buyers were vastly outnumbering the sellers. And you had to do insane things at that time. Write letters, say you'll pay way over asking, pay in all cash, like pledge your first born child, it felt like. And now that narrative has totally flipped. Not because, you know.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
A flood of supplies is hitting the market. It's just like a lot of people are having this apprehensive time. They're grappling with a lot of economic uncertainty. So you see some very, very cautious home shoppers out there. According to a survey released by Bank of America, 75% of prospective home buyers are waiting for home prices and interest rates to fall.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
So the housing market is frozen, but it's frozen in kind of like a different way, just from people saying... I can't really afford a house right now, nor do I necessarily even want to take that expense on with these higher mortgage rates.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Das Problem ist, dass man, obwohl man erwartet, dass die Zuhausepreise mehr als 1% fallen, 1% ist nicht ein Riss, also ich glaube, dass es technisch gut ist, aber der Grund, warum es nicht größer ist, ist, dass Verkäufer immer nur sagen können, hey, ich mag die Zuhausepreise nicht wirklich, ich lebe einfach in meinem Haus für ein anderes Jahr.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Es gibt nichts, was wirklich Leute drückt, um sich zu bewegen, insbesondere mit erhöhten Waren. Das ist Teil der Grund, warum man nicht größere Zuhausepreise sieht, als man sie erwarten könnte.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Yeah, Costco is sort of a canary in the coal mine company, just like Walmart is, where investors look at its earnings very closely to see clues on how shoppers are spending, what they're buying, etc. Because a lot of other maybe canary in the coal mine companies like Target, Procter & Gamble, Kraft Heinz have been slashing their annual outlooks.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
So how does one spell Eclair-Sismont correctly before you even have your learner's permit? Well, you gotta train like a professional athlete. For the past year, after finishing runner-up, Zaki absolutely grinded. He worked with three different coaches. The New York Times said his typical weekday schedule included five to six hours a day of practice. in seven to eight hours on the weekend.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
Walmart have been a little bit of an outlier and it looks like Costco is too. Because Costco just has so many levers it can pull to make it... Ja, genau.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
If you're working on building out your portfolio, check out public.com. Public is the investing platform for folks ready to take investing seriously.
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Trump Battles Court’s Tariff Block & Home Sellers Outnumber Buyers?
And you can diversify your investments while generating fixed income with a suite of yield accounts. That includes Public's high-yield cash account with an industry-leading 4.1% APY and its bond account at a 6% or higher yield.
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Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
You did tweet back in early October, and I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, that if you look at any great manager, investor, or entrepreneur, a common trait you'll find is what they do in their spare time. Often it's something to do with art or sports and nothing to do with business. You go on to say that you need a balance in your brain between chaos and the arts.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Have you ever tried to stay up to date on the market but found all the existing options underwhelming?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Can you elaborate on why you think hobbies are so important?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Well, do I have the site for you. Yahoo Finance has everything you need to stay informed about the finance world with constantly updating news, top and bottom stock gainers each day, and insights from experts. So, Neil, Can I count you in?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Oh, yeah.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Oh, gosh. That's one of the most stressful... I don't know if I can handle it.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
your Oscars nominations. You already got the Emmy under your belt. Let's see if we can get Oscars next.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
That's coming from you. Yeah. So I know you are a big watch guy. You're wearing two watches right now. And I recently saw this clip of you talking to slash lecturing Marques Brownlee, the tech YouTuber. He was wearing an Apple watch. Why were you kind of getting on his case about that? And I'm asking you as someone who is currently wearing an Apple watch.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
To see why Yahoo Finance can tame even the fiercest of sharks, head to yahoofinance.com today.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
It's very interesting. Thank you for kind of opening my eyes to horology.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Get a Teddy, get something. So you don't look like such a with an Apple watch.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Yeah. I have to turn away blinders on. Oh my goodness. Need a crazy chicken. All right, Kevin, this has truly been a wonderful time speaking with you. If you want more content from Mr. Wonderful, you can find him pretty much anywhere you look on social media. I can't thank you enough for sitting down with us and enjoy the rest of your day today.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
It's gone. Look at that.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
I'll take it. There you go, Neil. All right. Thank you.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
So I do appreciate you speaking with us, but I also want to thank you for all the likes that you have gotten us on social media, because posting a Mr. Wonderful quote to our Instagram goes viral every single time. You are just a quote machine. Where does it come from?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
You're very good at it. As an investor, what sectors are you most excited about? Are you riding maybe the AI hype train at all?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
So is that kind of how you evaluate an opportunity right there? I mean, we started at AI, but then you took us down through the entire, basically, supply chain and what needs to go into supporting this AI revolution. Is that generally how you think about these macro opportunities that a lot of people are seeing?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
It's a chat with Shark Tank royalty, Mr. Wonderful. It's Friday, November 29th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
It is an interview with the entrepreneur and investor Kevin O'Leary, better known as Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank. Mr. Wonderful is known as the blunt speaker of hard truths on the show, and it turns out he's not just playing up the bit for TV. We spoke with him about the state of the U.S. economy, his time working with Steve Jobs, and how to break into watch collecting.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
I think I've heard some of those lines, by the way, on the show before.
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
Yeah, you got those lines down. I do want to dig into your process of evaluating products and people, though. If you had to assign a percentage to when someone is pitching you, what percentage would you put towards, all right, this is a good product or this is a good idea? And what percentage do you go, I'm just betting on this person as a founder?
Morning Brew Daily
Kevin O’Leary on the Future of AI, Working With Steve Jobs, and Shark Tank
This guy was meant to talk for a living, and we hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. But first, a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. You know, I've never pitched a product before a panel of sharks, but if I had to sell them on Yahoo Finance, it would be a breeze. Okay, so how would you... kick it off. Hello, Sharks.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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,
Morning Brew Daily
ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
and in some cases disgust, Neil, at the abilities of this new technology.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
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.
Morning Brew Daily
ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
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?
Morning Brew Daily
ChatGPT’s Image Generator Goes Viral & Tesla Unfazed by Tariffs?
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
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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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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
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Oh my gosh, it's a special Neil's Numbers episode. It's Friday, December 27th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
So that means Sato, which already tops the list of most popular last names in the country, will see its share exponentially increase throughout the years until in 500 years' time, Everyone in Japan will be named Sato. This study was also published on April 1st of this year. So people at first thought it was a joke, but it was real.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
And the author said it was to drive awareness of this outdated marriage rule.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
When I think of Neal's numbers, this is the one that comes to mind, though, just because it's so out there. You would never think about it. You would never come across it unless you unearthed it. So that is just in my top three of Neal's numbers of all time. Okay, Neil, to close out the show, I have a quiz for you to see just how well you know your own numbers.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
This quiz picks out some themes that emerged over your year of numerology. Let's see if you can recognize your own tendencies. All right, so question one is, you did 11 numbers related to America this year. Stuff like, why does America suddenly have a record number of Bs? Why Americans stopped moving and Americans saying they needed a $1.5 million to comfortably retire?
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
But what do you think was the second most popular country you talked about this year in your Niels numbers?
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Japan was in a two-way tie with Russia, actually. There was the number that we just discussed about everyone being called Sato, but also there's a number about how Japanese diaper makers are shifting their production from babies to adults, given the increasing amount of elderly people in the country.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
On the Russian front, some stories included how Russia is spending so much on their war with Ukraine that is actually boosting the economy now, which was not the case when they first started. And of course, there is the two una decillion ruble fine that a Russian court handed down to Google for restricting state media channels.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
That is a two followed by 36 zeros, which is more than the entire world's GDP of $110 trillion dollars. That also probably is up there as the highest number on the Neal's number pantheon. I think it might be. Yeah, two unadecilium. All right, do you know what your most popular animal you talked about this year? You low-key do a lot of animal-themed Neal's numbers.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Yeah, I mean, among democracies that held elections this year, 80% saw their incumbent party lose. Some places it was longtime incumbents, too. In Senegal, its now president became the first opposition candidate to win a presidential election since the country became independent in 1960. So it really was a year of people saying, we want change, we want something different.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Do you know what your most popular animal was? Let's just go base rates here, dog. It was not dog. Well, that's actually a thing about what are some of the most popular animals in the world.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Or, you know, I think birds. You're thinking two land-based. Whales. You talked about fish and whales the most. I kind of lumped them into the same category. You did two stories on fish and whales. One was about the school of cod that were estimated to have eaten around 10 million anchovy-like fish in just four hours. And what was the largest mass predation event ever recorded? That was a fun one.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
And then the other marine-themed story you did was about a really down-bad whale who recorded the longest migration in history, over 8,000 miles across three oceans in search of a mate. And then the final aqua-themed one was about cocaine sharks. Do you remember this one? No, I couldn't believe it going back through either.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
There was a study of 13 sharks off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, and they all were found to have cocaine in their liver and muscles. The level of cocaine in these sharks were reported to be as much as 100 times higher than any other previously observed in marine life. Do you remember why they had cocaine in their system? I think this happens when, you know, smugglers dump cocaine off their boats.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Yeah. So you do love a nice marine theme.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
It lends itself to Neal's numbers. Do you know who the most talked about person in Neal's numbers were this year?
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
You're thinking in the wrong realm. It's not a business-related realm. It is entertainment, and it was Taylor Swift. Oh, no. I'm so predictable. She edged out Caitlin Clark, actually. Caitlin Clark appeared multiple times as well. Some of the Taylor Swift numbers were she drove more luxury travelers to Paris than even the Olympics. Five times as many US travelers, to be exact.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Also, the tortured poets department broke the record for weekly vinyl sales, which is another thing we've talked about. She sold 700,000 in just a weekend. And then there was also, this one I had totally forgot about, there was this Monmouth poll that found nearly one in five U.S. residents believed Taylor Swift was conspiring with Joe Biden to steal the election.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
So that was 20% of the electorate thought that Taylor Swift was part of this grand conspiracy theory. So Can't escape T-Suite.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
I don't have a goal.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
You let the numbers come to you. All right, the last part of this quiz. Do you know what the most popular fruit you talked about this year was? Tomato. Apple. It was the humble banana. And the two stories were, one, the duct tape banana that sold for how much? Six million dollars. Over six million dollars at the Sotheby's auction.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
It was this avant-garde art piece that was supposed to be commentary on art itself. And then finally, the other one was Trader Joe's hiked the price of their bananas for the first time in decades. Do you remember what they hiked it from and to? Let's go. 19 cents to 23 cents. That is completely right. They hiked it $0.04, which is actually a 20% increase for the first time since early 2000s.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
And you saw that in just the sheer amount of elections that were held and the sheer amount of incumbents that did end up losing.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
That got a lot of people up in arms because Trader Joe's is supposed to represent bargain brand prices. And seeing the banana price jump up, even $0.04 was enough to get people a little mad.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
I was going through the food ones you did, and I was like, did he do any other hot dogs one? Because I think we did talk about that $1.50 hot dog, but no, bananas was the most mentioned fruit in Neil's numbers this year. All right, finally, to close out the show, I think the only proper way to cap off a Neil's numbers episode is to do a Neil's numbers of Neil's numbers.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Basically, I just sat down and calculated how much information you shared with us this year. You did a Neil's numbers segment. 50 out of 52 weeks this year. The only weeks you missed were one, Thanksgiving. We were off. And then there was one week in October where Kyle and I did Kyle's calculations and I did Toby's tallies. I'm batting 960. You're batting really high. Good number right there.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Since you've given us three numbers per segment for 50 weeks, that's 50 times three, that is 150 different numbers this year. That is a lot of numbers. Also, I just went a little deeper, too. If each one of your intros ended up being about 250 words, that means you've written 37,500 words just dedicated to Neil's numbers alone. And I did Google it. The average young adult novel is about 50%.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
50,000 words, Neil. So you've written a young adult novella of sorts, all dedicated to your numbers. I need a vacation. There you go. And on that note, honestly, let's wrap this thing up. Let's wrap it up.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Great. So, Daniel, I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
And I remember you would talk about some Senate races just in specific states outspent even the entire election spending of countries like France or Canada or something like that. So it truly is a unique phenomenon to the U.S., just how much we spend on elections.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
It's always a little scary because Buffett, he's called the Oracle of Omaha for a reason. So he's sitting on a record cash positions as the market is sitting at record high. So something's got to give here. How about this? I'll out-Neil number you. I could never do that, but here's a number for you.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Berkshire Hathaway's cash alone now exceeds Berkshire Hathaway's total market value just 10 years ago. So it is literally holding more cash now than what it was worth just a decade ago. So truly one of the biggest cash piles.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
I was thinking, Neil, and so we are recording this before the end of the year, before maybe there's been more developments in this story, but one company that Berkshire Hathaway could buy is TikTok. Because remember, one thing that we keep saying is there's not enough suitors out there who could afford TikTok. Berkshire Hathaway could buy TikTok. Again, not Warren Buffett's typical business.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
But I was just thinking, like, wait a second. He could. This is one company that he maybe would see value in. Yeah.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Yeah, because it's not just data about the amount of money you lose by putting them into your account and losing. It is the opportunity cost of what that money could have been doing in the stock market. So it's even bigger than you probably imagined. We also read some of these horror stories this year where professional gamblers, people who do this for a living...
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
figured out that if they tried to reverse engineer the behavior of gambling addicts, they would get fed better boosts, better deals from the gambling sites. So they would do stuff like check their phones in the middle of the night, log onto the app at 2 a.m. And those behaviors signified to the sports gambling websites that, hey, this is someone who probably has an addiction to this.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Let's feed them a deal. And they were doing that just so they would get a better edge on things. So there really was a little bit of this was the year where sports gambling really was widespread, rolled out to a lot of different states, and now we are seeing just the second-order and third-order effects of it.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
If any country was going to do this, it was going to be Norway because you're right. There are these generous government incentives, but also it's one of the wealthiest countries in the world. So the residents there can offset some of that upfront cost of buying an electric vehicle. It is funny too, though, because a lot of the incentives that the government does offer for electric vehicle buyers.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
They are funded in large part by the money the country makes by selling its oil and gas reserves to other countries. So they hope to end all diesel and gas vehicle sales by next year. Again, if one country is going to do it, it is Norway.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
But I would say that they are a bit of an outlier and not indicative of, or maybe not not indicative, but definitely one of the people higher up or the countries higher up the adoption curve on.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Oh, you flatter me too much. Neil, this is my favorite segment every week. Not only because I learn a lot, but also you do most of the talking. So let's dive right in.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Yeah, this was something that I wrote about all the way back in high school. People have been talking about abolishing the penny for a long time. The sheer amount of pennies out there is staggering. Since the U.S. first began issuing the penny in 1793, they produced half a trillion of them, which is more than the number of stars in the entire Milky Way galaxy.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
So one of the parts of this article, which was fantastic, as you mentioned, is that if some of the pennies that were to be lying around were to be found... and cashed in at banks, it would just overwhelm all the storage we have in the entire United States. So it is completely impractical to try to return these pennies to circulation.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
It is almost better that they are laying under our couches, in between our seat cushions, stuff like that. There were so many just oxymorons that come with being a penny. The fact that it costs more to make a penny than it does to actually spend a penny never made sense. So I don't know if we will see any movement on this front because you do need an act of Congress to banish the penny.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Do you think we will see any movement on this front?
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
There you go. Track them down and you get on that. Up next, more numbers coming your way. Neil, as always, thank you for those numbers. Sometimes throughout the year, though, when there are a few extra numbers to go around, you can't choose just three. I get to jump in with some Toby's tally, and I'm going to do that on today's episode as well.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
The first tally I picked up this year was $2,047, which is the price per person. per square foot on the most expensive street in the world, Milan's Via Monte Napoleone. Now, this was a fun story. Milan's luxury fashion scene propelled Via Monte Napoleone into the top spot, surpassing New York's Fifth Avenue. But that is not why I picked it.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
I picked it because we got a few emails and texts from people who said that this number in particular helped them win some of their trivia competitions. Now, I don't know if one of the writers of bar trivia around the country heard this Neal's Numbers and got inspired or if it was just a coincidence.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
But still, this one will hold a special place in the Neal's Number pantheon for being helpful enough to win trivia for a few people, Neal. That is all I'm going for.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
It is super fancy, but all that matters is somebody won some bar tab in some far off bar in the United States because of this Neal's number. Okay. The second tally I remember from the year is that digital camera sales grew in 2023 for the first time in the 13 years. And the reason I picked this one is because it feels like a lot like a Toby's trend, honestly.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
After shrinking every year since 2010 due to powerful smartphone cameras replacing single-purpose cameras, there has been an uptick in interest in these vintage shooters of late. Part of the rise is also because sales absolutely hit rock bottom. They were $1.2 million last year compared to $10.4 million in 2010. But also, people are nostalgic.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Vibe that only digital cameras can impart to photos rather than relying on their smartphones. So I like this one because it speaks to the broader trends that we've touched on in Toby's Trends this year as well.
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Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Yeah, some of the other stories that come to mind are Hot Wheels being the most popular selling toy in the world, partly driven by these nostalgia collectors. Also vintage shopping. That was a Toby's trend as well. It's just so hot right now. Nostalgia is very much in. The one aspect that we haven't discussed too is that travel made a big comeback post the pandemic.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
And so that led to another increase in camera sales as well. But yeah, that was a quasi Toby's trend slash Neil's number right there.
Morning Brew Daily
Neal’s Numbers of 2024: Warren Buffet T-Bills, Digital Cameras, and More
Yeah, I know. Okay, my final tally is just a banger, and that is everyone in Japan will be called Sato by 2531, unless some changes are made to marriage laws in the country. So in Japan, married couples are not permitted to use separate surnames.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
I'm not going to go into the details. Up next, it is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
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Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
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Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
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Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
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Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
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Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
They can fill the cavities in your soul and your heart that you were looking for your dentist to fill there. But I am very curious to hear people's thoughts on this because that isn't probably the only dental experience that people have had where they haven't gotten any feedback whatsoever. So... Clearly, you're still thinking about it. I am still thinking about it.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
It is fascinating to see someone with the title manager getting this big pay bump because if you look across corporate America, managers are not exactly popular words and popular positions because a lot of companies are trying to flatten themselves. There's too many layers of bureaucracy. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said he wants to increase the ratio of workers to managers.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Google CEO Sundar Pichai also said that they had culled about 10% of its managerial roles. So in big tech, there is this move to get rid of managers. Walmart, though, is prioritizing them because These are basically like companies in themselves that they're managing. They're not just managing one store. They're managing a portfolio of stores. They're going and checking in on each store manager.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
It is this job that requires management. It is a pure management role, and you see that in just these massive salaries. Every time Walmart kind of publicizes these salaries, this story goes a little bit mini-viral because the number is big, $620,000 if you get full bonuses. That is a hefty chunk of change.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
My dog of the week is EA Sports because no one is playing its soccer video games anymore. Its stock fell 16% yesterday after the video game maker reported slumping demand for its FC25 video game. Now, if you're thinking to yourself, FC25, what even is that? Well, I'm right there with you.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
FC25 is a franchise that used to be known as FIFA before the two parties couldn't come to a licensing agreement prompting a name change. But the game sold well last year, so you can't pin it all on a name. Mostly players complained about a lack of innovation as well as some weird in-game physics bugs, which gave the franchise less interest. staying power than its predecessor.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
That is bad news for EA, who relies on its soccer games to be a consistent revenue driver for the company. It is forecasting that its live service net bookings, which is all the money it makes from microtransactions within the game, is set to decline by mid-single digits this year.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
EA shaved about half a billion dollars off its 2025 revenue forecast as well, so these problems are certainly affecting the bottom line in
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Now, a quick word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. We are fans of Yahoo Finance over here at MBD because it sets us up to succeed on this show every morning. I can get into the weeds on a certain stock and see if it's a contender for Stock of the Week or Dog of the Week.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Just something to illustrate that point. EA stock trades at about 17 times its forward earnings estimates. Take-Two, which makes GTA, they're trading at about 27 times their forward earnings estimates. So there's clearly a lot more excited for that upcoming GTA franchise. But yeah, when you talk about...
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Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Basically, people in the industry call FIFA or FC25 the Swiss clock of media because it is just so consistent every year. Everyone loves playing FIFA. Everyone loves playing FC24. But this year, for some reason, growth stagnated. People aren't buying as many packs in games when they're making their ultimate team. So that is a huge warning light for EA if they can't have their—
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Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Day in, day out performer. If that starts to fall off the cliff, then it gets a little ugly for them because they need their, you know, kind of consistent Steph Curry to come out and give them 30 points a game. Right now, he's not playing very well. Now let's sprint to the finish with some headlines from the week's news you may have missed.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Up first, a long and winding chapter in the opioid crisis in America is finally coming to a close. The Sackler family and the company they control, Purdue Pharma, reached a $7.4 billion settlement with a coalition of 15 states over its role in fueling the opioid crisis.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Under the agreement, the Sackler family will pay up to $6.5 billion over 15 years, while Purdue Pharma will contribute nearly $900 million. The settlement is one of the biggest payouts to emerge from the US opioid crisis that has led to over 600,000 deaths since 1999, according to the CDC. The money will fund opioid addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery programs nationwide.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Yeah, it's a weird structure. The Sacklers are not given that automatic protection from liabilities that the previous deal did give them, but victims will also need to agree to not pursue further legal action against the Sacklers in order to receive a payout.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
It's the perfect place for going deeper than the headlines too. You can get live quotes, advanced charts, and expert research reports all in one place. So whether you are preparing for a business news show or you just want justice for Trent Reznor's soundtrack, check out yahoofinance.com. That's yahoofinance.com.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
So it is complicated, but the main story here is that the number that was agreed to go towards funding those opioid prevention and addiction and recovery programs has gone up, but It used to be $6 billion. Now it's $7.4 billion. And it does seem like slowly this chapter is kind of winding to a close when it comes to the opioid crisis in America.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
And it's endemic to the entire cable news industry. I mean, you said deafening silence when asked if people are watching TV. And it's true because overall television viewership of the inauguration was the lowest in over a decade. Less than 25 million people tuned in to watch Trump take the oath to become president. That was down from 34 million who watched Biden.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Even down from the 31 million who watched Trump in 2017 as well. So it's not just CNN. Even though CNN is feeling pressure from both the left, MSNBC, and the right at Fox News, it's kind of squeezed in the middle somewhere. It is just something that is affecting the entire cable news industry.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
One of the most sought-after modern rookie cards for an MLB player was found this week by an 11-year-old, and now he's deep in negotiations with a ball club who wants it. Collectors have been trying to track down a Pittsburgh Pirates Paul Skeen's autograph card ever since the flamethrower made his MLB debut.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
The one-of-one card was pulled by an 11-year-old collector in Los Angeles, prompting the Pirates to make him an offer that they think he can't refuse. The package includes two season tickets behind home plate at Pirates games for 30 years, also the chance to host a softball game at the park for three decades, and some other Skeens merch and meet-and-greets.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
The collector community has pretty unanimously come out and said, no, no, no, that is not nearly enough. Do not take the deal because this card is likely to fetch $1 million or more at auction.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
After years of embracing the idea that a more diverse, equitable and inclusive workforce was beneficial, the business world is now grappling with the government's change of course on those issues. Donald Trump has issued multiple executive orders this past week relating to terminating illegal DEI mandates in the federal government.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
He's got school. Why would he ever want season tickets to a Pirates game? He's not even a Pirates fan, too. He lives in Los Angeles. So a lot of people were saying, absolutely do not take this deal. But good on the Pirates, I guess, for making news and at least trying to get their hands on this card.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
W-D-N-R-P. It's a rallying cry around the world. The corpse flower is a celebrity whenever it blooms. There's a few around the world. One in San Francisco. There's another one in San Diego that do become these big events. They make headlines whenever they bloom because they do not bloom very frequently. It takes a lot of energy. This is a big flower we're talking about here.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
It takes a lot of energy for it to emerge from underground and spread its smelly wings for the world and pollinators to see.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Some presidents of zoos have told news outlets that this is basically like having a panda these days where remember pandas are very rare to be in zoos whenever one comes to like a zoo near you a lot of people flock to see it the corpse flower is the Panda of you know the the fauna or the pygmy hippo or the pygmy hippo, right? Yeah, we do see these celebrities start to emerge.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
This one is definitely the smelliest although maybe mudang
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
I want you to share today's episode with someone who was a late bloomer, not someone who smells bad, just someone who took a little while to emerge, but is now beautiful and maybe a little smelly.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
On Monday, he put those who worked in federal DEI offices on administrative leave, and a memo issued this Wednesday warned employees that they could face adverse consequences if they fail to report on anyone continuing to work in DEI for the government.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Some companies like Meta and Walmart got ahead of the curve and already began to roll back their DEI programs leading up to the election, but others are fighting back against the shift. Speaking at Davos, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told CNBC to, quote, bring them on when asked about activists pushing the bank to change their existing policies.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Costco, Apple, Microsoft and others have also held fast to their initiatives as well. So, Neil, there's clearly a lot of moves and counter moves going on right now as businesses try to position themselves amongst a shifting cultural and legal landscape when it comes to DEI.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
It does seem like Trump is testing to see whether that Supreme Court decision can actually be extended to private employers. It looks like we're setting up a court battle about if these DEI initiatives can be struck down through executive orders.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
One of the big tools that these anti-DEI activists are using are trying to bring shareholder proposals to companies to try to ensure that these DEI policies are struck down. Their argument... is a financial one saying that, look at what the federal government is doing. They are changing these DI policies.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
That leaves us as shareholders vulnerable to lawsuits against us being the company that they are shareholders in if we continue to have these DI practices in place. The problem is that those shareholder votes are pretty routinely rejected. A lot have been filed against Apple, Walmart, Starbucks. They have all been handily defeated. They rarely get more than 2% of shareholder support.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
So even though you hear some noise, when it actually comes down to what shareholders want, they are not supporting these anti-DEI efforts.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Then Trump's move to abolish DEI initiatives at the federal level is causing chaos in the corporate world. It's Friday, January 24th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Yeah, this was a long and meandering speech, 45 minutes packed with a lot of stuff to break down. I think if you take it as a whole, though, it was kind of Trump laying out his proposal for almost a carrot and stick approach to how he's going to approach world economics in this next term. So he clearly wants to lower taxes in America to incentivize companies to set up businesses there.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
And he also wants to raise taxes, raise tariffs on companies outside of America to hopefully offset some of that revenue lost from lowering taxes in America. He definitely wants to produce more oil. Oil was obviously one of the big headline announcements that he has. He thinks it will lower energy costs, bring down inflation. And then he also wants to lower interest rates, which...
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
again, is something that is more of a want right now than anything else because, again, the Fed does have its independence. So he was trying to lay out this vision that he has to solve everything that is ailing the U.S. economy, bring down those higher prices, bring down those higher taxes, kind of restart manufacturing in the country and jumpstart a world where the U.S.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
is the largest energy producer as well and also get those interest rates down. So part of it was, you know, Actual vision part of it was just kind of hopeful. I'm going to tell Jerome Powell to lower interest rates, but it was quite newsy.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
And then finally, just to hammer home the point about Trump wanting to produce more energy, to produce more oil, the problem with this drill baby drill approach is that demand around the world isn't very strong for oil right now. Big economies, big world economies, mainly China, are kind of struggling with some of the similar issues that the U.S. is, which is higher inflation, lower job growth.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
So the United States is producing more oil than any country at any time in history right now. So Oil companies aren't exactly clamoring to get new leases to build new drills. So that is why you saw the oil market kind of react negatively to Trump speaking on it because there just isn't quite demand to match the supply that Trump wants to bring to the market.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Yeah, it is a different Oscars ceremony this year, not only because of the wildfires, but also because it is a much more wide-open race. Brutalist and Nora Conclave, they all have the joint highest odds for taking home the best picture.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
It is also interesting because I was looking at the box office haul of the Brutalist so far in the United States, and I can't really even call it a haul because it's just about $8 million. It hasn't been widely released yet, so more people will see it, but it's a pretty low...
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
uh attended so far best picture nominee it also has some controversy tied to it as well the editors of the movie admitted to using ai to touch up and change part of the actor's voices in the movie adrian brody has this hungarian accent hungarian is a very difficult language to speak it has a lot of nuances to it and they said listen if we didn't use these tools we would still be in post-production right now it was a very tight budget only 10 million dollars but
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
Again, there is this kind of perception that AI is this replacement for workers. It's taking away workers from creatives, which is why you saw a little bit of controversy with its usage of AI. So certainly a little bit of a different feel from the Barbenheimer epic of last year's Oscars, but a lot of good movies up for grabs.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
just want to talk about a few snubs real quick before we go to break. My biggest snub was Denzel Washington in Gladiator 2. When Gladiator 2 came out, there was all this talk that he was going to win Best Supporting Actor. He absolutely dominated that movie, and I saw it, and it was not a good movie, but Denzel was fantastic in it. Didn't even get nominated, which was sad.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
And then, of course, we talked about it at the top of the show, but Challengers not getting nominated for Best Original Score is a travesty. Anyone who has seen that movie with Zendaya and the tennis, they know that one of the main characters was the soundtrack of that movie. So the fact that it didn't get a nod is heartbreaking to me.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Targets DEI Programs & Walmart Managers Make $600K?
What you just described to me is the ideal dental visit. This isn't a weekly one-on-one with your manager. You're not looking for actual constructive criticism. The fewer words exchanged, the better, in my opinion. If you were looking for words of affirmation, which I think you were, go to your significant other. Go to a therapist.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
I am so excited for this, Neil, because it means we get to hang out with you all in person and be wildly impressed with how smart and plugged into the news cycle you guys are. So once more, June 3rd, 6 p.m. in the East Village, Trivia Night with Neil and I. There will be prizes. So sign up at the link in the show description. And now a word from our sponsor, Iterable.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Who would have thought Michael Saylor would say such a thing as that? But yeah, it was a big day for Bitcoin, not just because it reached an all-time high, but also there was this big gala that Trump hosted last night where he brought in hundreds of the top investors in his meme coin.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
aka Trump coin, for this intimate private dinner where he just spoke about his vision for crypto in the economy ahead. The price of admission ranged anywhere from $55,000 all the way up to $37.7 million. They hosted this big competition. Whoever was holding the most coins over a certain period got to have dinner with Trump.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
And there was a lot of protesters outside saying like, hey, this is exactly what we don't want. You do not necessarily want a means of exchanging access to the president by buying his coin. especially if it comes to foreign investors as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
So two kind of things were happening in parallel here that Bitcoin hitting an all-time high in this big dinner with access to the president, which just shows the place crypto occupies in our country right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
My dog of the week is Nike because it just did the business equivalent of crawling back to your ex five years later saying, you were right, I needed to work on myself, but please take me back. Yep, Nike is back selling on Amazon. after a self-imposed breakup in 2019 to focus on their own DTC sales and crack down on counterfeits and low-quality items.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
The deal is a win for Amazon, who has been trying to attract more high-end brands back to its platform, but for Nike, it represents the unwinding of a strategy that led to a 35% drawdown in its share price over the last five years, where it shunned wholesale partners to focus on its own website sales. However, that strategy pivot was kind of overshadowed by a bigger announcement too yesterday.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Price hikes are coming. Starting June 1st, some Nike gear will cost up to $10 more. You can expect to pay $5 more for sneakers under $150. and $10 more for any above that range. New CEO Elliot Hill is trying to reverse a revenue slump that's lasted longer than a pair of beat-up Air Force Ones.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
But when that turnaround plan involves higher prices and a return to Amazon, you get the muted response from the market we saw this week, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Neil, you're a group chat guy. I see you discussing show topics with your college friends, but everyone's on different time zones, right?
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Yeah. One of the big strategy mistakes that they're trying to recover from is they leaned way too heavily on their workhorses, their classic sneakers, like Air Force Ones, the Jordan line, their Pegasuses to kind of juice demand online, but they kind of overproduced a lot of those skews. And now they're trying to push people back to more of their
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Full price sneakers, stuff like Air Max shoes with a focus on running as well. So it's just fascinating to see like the renaissance of Nike is passing through Amazon, which is not necessarily something that you would equate with returning the luster to the brand. So I don't know. Elliott Hill still has only been there for a little bit.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
But yeah, this turnaround is looking harder than initially expected.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Yeah. Harvard says it's got nearly 10,000 people in its international academic population. And also those people are paying more to attend the institution. When room and board are included, the total cost usually adds up to around $87,000. So that is going to be a massive financial hit. And it just adds to the financial pressure that Harvard's already facing. Remember,
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
But they always get it right because your friends are smart. But that's what marketing feels like when you're locked into fixed campaigns. You might send a message when you're ready because your campaign calendar says so, but it might not be when your customer is ready. Iterable flips that.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
The Trump administration has already frozen more than $2.6 billion of Harvard's funding. They've cut off future grants. They've also called for it to lose its tax-exempt status. So this is just the latest in a series of financial blows.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
I'm going New York, baby. Hometown favorite here. But the Weenie 500 might be the greatest idea in human history. The issue is that these things are not great cars, however. Their long wheelbase makes their turning radius about the same as a battleship. So don't expect the Wieners to pick up any lap time through the corners.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
But on the straights, also don't expect them to pick up much time either because these Wiener Robles ride on an Isuzu NPR truck chassis powered by a gas fed 330 horsepower, six liter General Motors V8 engine, which means they can go zero to 60 in, wait for it, 24 seconds. So yes, Neil, these things are not built for speed, but they are built for spectacle.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Finally, Dr. Beach is back doing the thing he does best, ranking beaches on the internet. Stephan Leatherman, a coastal scientist at Florida International University who goes by Dr. Beach, has updated his annual beach rankings, and we have a new number one.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Cooper's Beach in Southampton on the eastern end of Long Island is, according to the doctor, the best beach in the U.S., just beating out Wai Lai Beach in Maui. What are the doctor's qualifications, you might ask? He's been ranking beaches since 1991 and uses a 50-factor checklist to evaluate everything from the presence of algae to the cleanliness of the air and water.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
In total, beaches from Hawaii, New York, and Florida dominated the list, but Cooper's came out on top. It's a big, beautiful beach, Leatherman told CNN in an interview.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
I know. I'm confused at how he's got a 50-factor checklist, but crowds and crowding isn't necessarily one of them because he did mention the fact that you're going to have to deal with traffic on the way to this Long Island beach, and then also there's a very high cost of parking as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
He recommends taking a free shuttle from downtown Southampton, but I'm kind of on the Dr. Beach is not necessarily correct train because I like the sugary white sand of Florida from Clearwater Beach and whatnot. He's more of the overall setting, and it's if it's more natural.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
It's getting the whole group chat on the same time zone, real-time personalized engagement powered by AI and fueled by customer data across every channel.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
So I remember dating back a few years ago on this podcast, I've had a little bit of beef with Dr. Beach, but I do like seeing Florida well-represented here with two beaches making the top 10 list. Cape Cod in Massachusetts also made it as well. So Dr. Beach, he's got a good bit going. Go check out. Cooper's Beach in South Hampton.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
And also, don't forget to head to the show description to sign up for Trivia Night that is going down on June 3rd.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
So let's start with how this might affect your tax bill though. More than eight in 10 households would get a tax cut in 2026 under this bill's current form. The average household is looking at a 2026 tax cut of around $2,900 compared to what it would pay if those 2017 cuts actually went in expired.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
So pretty solid there, but also 60% of those tax cuts would go to the top 20% of households with more than one third going to those making over $460,000 or more. If you're a family, you're also going to stand to benefit from this. There's a temporary $500 increase in the child tax credit. Plus, all newborns are going to be given $1,000 in this kind of unique concept called a Trump account.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
It's fueled by a one-time deposit by the federal government. So if that bill passes, parents can contribute to that account. It would just go towards a broad base market, uh, tracking the U S stock index. So that is kind of the play by play of who specifically is going to affect, which is a wide and broad swath of people.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
And then I also want to talk about what this bill did to clean energy in order to get it across the finish line. Congress basically completely cut clean energy credits, which is a big blowback to renewable energy companies, specifically rooftop solar companies who stood to benefit from a lot of these clean energy kind of rebates under the Inflation Reduction Act.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Those credits are now set to go away in 2028. And you saw that reflected in the market. Sunrun, the biggest rooftop solar company in the country, fell 37% yesterday. So this was kind of like Armageddon for a lot of those clean energy solar companies, as well as wind companies, anyone really who is standing to benefit from those IRA tax credits.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Then RIP to the penny. The U.S. Treasury will stop minting one set coins in a matter of weeks. It's Friday, May 23rd. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Moving on, the penny has entered a heads I win, tails you lose scenario with the U.S. Treasury. One cent coins are being officially phased out. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department will stop putting new pennies into circulation by early next year, instructing businesses to get ready to round prices up or down.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
You don't need to pay a penny for the government's thoughts to figure out why they pulled the plug. There has been a long bipartisan effort to ditch the lowest unit of American currency, spanning from Obama to Trump, primarily due to costs. The Mint expects to save about $56 million a year through reduced material costs after putting an end to the most confounding of currency calculus.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Each penny is worth only one cent, but costs nearly four cents to make. Add it all up, and the U.S. lost more than $85 million last year on the coin. As for what is going to happen to prices, non-cash transactions will still be priced in exact increments, but businesses will have to round prices to the nearest five cents for cash transactions. Neil, it was probably time.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
60% of actively circulating coins sit in coin jars, according to the Federal Reserve. But still, the penny is so much a part of American culture. Penny stocks, a penny saved is a penny earned. Offering your two cents, it's hard to imagine life without it.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Yeah. And no need to go and throw your pennies away right now, if you even have any, because they will remain legal tender. You can pay with them. And then also fewer than one in five payments are actually made in cash, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. So it's not going to rock a lot of boats. A lot of people are already tapping their Apple Pay. They're paying with credit cards.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
And yeah, Americans throw away up to $68 million in coins a year. So it's not like people are really using these things a lot. One thing that is a second order effect of this is that if pennies go out of circulation, what's going to become more in demand? And that are nickels. And the nickel is a disaster when it comes to its production costs. Obviously, a nickel is worth $0.05.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
It costs about $0.14 to produce in the last fiscal year. So that's up 20% from the year before. So you're saying like, hey, we're trying to save money here by phasing out the penny. The nickel might be even more costly.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Well, first of all, I'm trying to come up with the Barbenheimer version of this. And all I got is Miss Stitch and Possible Lilo or Mission Stitch Possible. They're all bad. So don't even try to stitch them together. I guess pun intended there. But yeah, Lilo and Stitch is just this movie that has gained so much groundswell.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
It was originally supposed to just be a direct-to-streaming sort of thing. But then over the last five years, Stitch has just exploded in terms of its popularity. You just look at the merch sales. Just five years ago, they were pulling in $200 million from this franchise, which isn't bad. But then that has swelled to $2.6 billion in Disney's last 2024 fiscal year.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
So there has just been this groundswell of support. A lot of it from young women who grew up watching the original film and have kind of
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Aged into their lives and still just have very good nostalgic memories of it But it's also brought in a lot of new fans as well and Disney is on it with the merch They're putting it on everything from dog collars to pineapple shaped goblets They are going hard in the paint on this because they remember when they released 2013's frozen No one could get Elsa dresses anywhere and it was just this huge crunch from parents They know the merch aspect of this calculus is very important.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
So they are just printing up Like, you wouldn't believe the amount of merch.
Morning Brew Daily
Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Here are the details. It's going to be in New York City, June 3rd. That's a Tuesday at 6pm at a very trendy bar in the East Village. We can't tell you the exact location on air. That comes when you sign up for the event, which you can do by following the link in the show description.
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Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Up next, let's talk about our stock of the week and dog of the week. Do you ever feel like you can feel yourself getting older? Literally all the time. Just ask my lower back.
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Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
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Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
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Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases. There are no points to calculate, no limits or deadlines. Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone. If that sounds like the kind of simplicity you want in a credit card, apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone.
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Federal Funding Bill's Market Impact & Goodbye to the Penny?
Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Brands. Terms and more at applecard.com.
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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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Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Then order your holiday gifts now because thousands of workers are officially on strike against Amazon. It's Friday, December 20th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
One thing that I think is a bright spot for the NBA is their ability to expand internationally, though, because you mentioned that a lot of their best players in the league right now are international players or at least European players. They have floated this idea of expanding to starting a league in Europe.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
They've been in talks with FIBA, which is the international governing body for basketball. And they want to start up like a sister league over in Europe, which I think is a great idea. Europe loves basketball. The NBA doesn't have a huge presence there outside of most of the best players come over and play in their league.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
So I do think that the horizon is bright if you can kind of nail these international. But that doesn't solve U.S. viewership. It doesn't, but if you can make it up in aggregate across the world, then you are making the pie bigger as a whole.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
and illegal streams. If you look through any NBA Reddit thread, everyone's like, of course NBA viewership is down. We all watch illegally. They self-admit to it. So that is another aspect that the league doesn't want to confront, but is happening.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
All I'm saying is watch out, Matthew McConaughey. I am coming for your voiceover jobs.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Now let's sprint to the finish with some headlines you may have missed. Poland is running low on a critical resource ahead of its presidential elections, but it's not oil or grain. It's butter. Poland is selling 1,100 tons of its frozen strategic butter reserves in order to stabilize prices it's blaming on a global milk shortage.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Nations don't just keep emergency reserves of things like oil or gold. Some countries also keep a stockpile of products it deems essential to local diets, which is why you'll find things like strategic maple syrup reserves in Canada or pork reserves in China or butter in Poland, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
By the way, it is unsalted butter too, which for my bakers out there, they know that you want to use unsalted butter so you can control the amount of salt you're adding to dishes. If you use salted butter, it can be a little bit uneven with the amount of salt in a salted butter stick. So unsalted butter, that's usually the way to go if you're serious about it.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Salted if you're just lazy and you just want to have a little extra flavor, but if you want to control the salt content in the dish, you should use unsalted butter.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
See, I am not about this because I think the experience of playing a claw game is about the fact that it's difficult. You're not paying to grab a plush toy. You're not expecting that your dollar is translating directly into the prize you're getting. It's about trying to grab that plush toy.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Where I do think that they have a point where I draw the line is where some of these machines have features where if you spend X amount of money... you will be guaranteed a grab. That feels a little scummy because you would hope that you're guaranteed a chance at a grab every time you attempt one.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
So I am generally on the side of like, it should be difficult, but it shouldn't be unfairly difficult.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Well, it would be true the fact that I don't, if I live in like a cashless society, so I only ever have like $2 on me. So I'm limited by the very fact that I just don't carry cash with me, but otherwise you are spot on, Neil. Now let's finish off the show with some more holiday themed headlines.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Up first, if you have a kid who loves stuffed animals, maybe skip the unicorn and dragons this year and not for the world's largest rodent instead. That's right, the it animal for this holiday season is the capybara. Powered by a wave of videos on social media, capybaras are the latest animal to become an unexpected star. It helps that interest in plush toys is peaking too.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Plush toy animal sales are up 115% in the first nine months of this year compared to the same period in 2019 as people look for some velvety comfort. And let's face it, Neil, a capybara is a lot cooler of a gift to receive than something boring like a cat or a dog.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
If you waited till the last minute to holiday shop, you might be out of luck. Teamsters union members officially went on strike at Amazon early on Thursday, affecting operations at seven facilities in multiple states. Okay, maybe some of that fear-mongering about late holiday gifts was a little overblown.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
I mean, it's hard to say. What other animals have been in movies recently? I don't know. Dinosaurs? Something like that?
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
I am out on the beard front right there. The problem is that this goes beyond just looks because when you show up looking like Jesus, dressed like Jesus, people kind of expect you to act like Jesus as well. So a lot of these Jesus lookalikes have said people... come up to them. They want to hold their hand.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
They want to talk to them and they feel this burden to act like Jesus, even though they are just some random guy. So it seems like the hardest lookalike gig you could possibly do. I would much rather opt for the mall Santa gig.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Great show, Daniel. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
The Teamsters represent roughly 9,000 Amazon workers nationwide, which is less than 1% of the company's total U.S. workforce. Despite their small size, though, the Teamsters, who are fighting for basic benefits including better wages and hours, are looking to apply maximum pressure during the busy holiday season.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
It's unclear how long the strike might last, and things are muddied by the fact that Amazon refuses to negotiate since it does not even recognize the union. To be clear, a spokesperson for Amazon said the Teamsters don't represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary. This entire narrative is a PR play.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Labor unrest is certainly a key theme to watch out for this holiday season as Starbucks workers union representing over 10,000 baristas also recently authorized a potential strike. So this holiday period, Neil, it could be a bit of a rocky one.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Right, so it could delay stuff, but it won't be widespread delays. One important variable here is time. Shorter strikes have become a more popular tool for striking workforces in recent years. The one that comes to mind is the Kaiser Permanente strike where In 2023, it was very short, just three days, but it also involved 75,000 healthcare workers, the biggest healthcare strike of all time.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
That was very successful. They did get a lot of the demands that they were asking for. These shorter strikes are different from the traditional strikes that you may think of that the automakers underwent, that the Hollywood writers underwent, that Boeing workers underwent, which are open-ended strikes that go on until a new labor deal is released. Amazon...
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
workers or the Teamsters union doesn't have the same amount of leverage that those auto workers or Boeing workers did. And so you probably will see this become a much shorter strike because there is no open-ended leverage that they can apply because it is just— The leverage that they can apply is the holiday shopping season.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Exactly. So I would think it would be a shorter strike even though they are trying to inflict maximum pain at this current moment.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Sorry, not sorry. The slate of holiday episodes I'm very excited about, though. We have shows with topics ranging from how to handle your personal finances going into the new year, some market trends you should keep an eye on. We also did a Who Said It episode where Neil and I tried to guess which one of us was responsible for some of the odder things that came out of our mouths this year.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
That is the big question because on the one hand, if you are Hollywood looking at this, you've seen some pretty epic failures in the past. I mean, this production was riddled with a lot of controversy. Workers were talking about bad working condition. Contestants were saying the same thing. So maybe if you're a Hollywood exec saying, ah, this YouTuber can't run a big production like this.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
One of the other biggest YouTubers in the world, Ryan Kaji, is this 12-year-old who has this toy review empire. He tried to go the Hollywood route and release a full-length feature film that absolutely bombed in theaters. Charlie D'Amelio and the D'Amelio family launched this reality TV show that was soon after canceled. So there's a lot of L's in the influencer to Hollywood pipeline.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
On the other hand, though, YouTube is absolutely a force, and most of America is spending their time in front of televisions watching YouTube. Two and a half billion people tune into YouTube monthly. So social media and television culture are definitely blending into one. And right now you have the biggest YouTuber launching one of the biggest game shows of all time.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
So we're going to really see where that line is drawn and if you can go from the smaller screen to the slightly larger screen.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Yeah. And you mentioned too that Will, why is he even doing this? Because he does get so many views on YouTube. His Squid Game video, which is his most popular video ever, where he recreated the viral Netflix TV show in real life without obviously the death component involved, that got 678 million views. You'd be hard pressed to think that Amazon will get even a 10th of that. But
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
It is just another example of these worlds colliding, and we'll see if he is one of the first creators to really make a successful jump from YouTube to television. It is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where Neil and I pick one stock who had a better week than the kid who got to open one of their presents early, and one who got a paper cut while trying to wrap their presents.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Neil, I took you down in the pre-show game of Red Rover, so I am up first. And my stock of the week is Darden Restaurants. The owner of brands like Olive Garden and Longhorn Steakhouse popped nearly 10% following better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Even as the casual dining restaurant segment as a whole is looking worse than weeks-old shrimp-scampi leftovers, Darden Stallworks, Olive Garden, and Longhorn Steakhouse are bucking the broader trend. Same-store sales at Longhorn grew 7.5% in the quarter as its middle-of-the-road prices for solid steaks resonated with deal-savvy customers.
Morning Brew Daily
Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
They are all great, so as you put your feet up and relax over the break, maybe toss on an episode or eight. Now a word from our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport. The new Range Rover Sport is a sophisticated take on sporting luxury, offering focused on-road performance and world-renowned off-road capabilities. What are you doing? What do you mean? I'm doing a Range Rover ad.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Contrast that to Darden's fine dining segment, which includes upscale steakhouses like the Capital Grill and Ruth's Chris, which reported a 6% sales decline, which was steeper than expected. So, Neil, Darden is a pretty perfect microcosm of the restaurant industry as a whole right now. People are looking for good value.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
You're absolutely right. It seems like they think demand is going to be returning as long as you are threading that needle between good value and good food. I do think it's funny, too. Some of the other restaurant chains that have struggled this year, like the Red Lobsters of the world, like the TGI Fridays of the world, just didn't resonate with consumers. You still need your food to resonate.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
And it is funny. You mentioned the Never Ending Possible promotion that was a big success. They extended it for a month longer than they normally do at Olive Garden. But then you go back to the endless shrimp debacle that didn't fully sink Red Lobster, but ended up contributing to its demise. So it's a tale of two endless offers right there. Clearly, pasta is the way to go.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
A little bit more profitable for the company. Up next, Dog of the Week is coming your way.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
I mean, I think you mentioned a lot of the reasons why they are concerned right there. In the form of very hypothetical questions. They're hypothetical, but they are questions posed by the audience, by the fan base who watches the NBA. Let's start with the product on the court, because that is one thing that you have to protect. All the other things...
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Yeah, but what's with the voice? Oh, I'm just trying to be like those car commercials on TV. Visceral, dramatic, uncompromising, rise to every occasion in the Range Rover Sport.
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Streaming market changes like the entertainment market shifts But you need the product to be good and one of the big criticisms is that basketball has almost become a solved game at this point It's pushed the game towards a very three ball heavy approach If you look at a heat map of where players used to shoot from in the 80s and 90s There was all these sprinkled mid-range jumpers in there which people thought led to more interesting basketball now it is basically concentrated behind the three-point arc or at the rim which fans are saying is
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Amazon Faces Pre-Holiday Strike & MrBeast Brings YouTube Magic to Hollywood
Not a great product right there. So that is, I think, the biggest issue that the NBA is grappling with that they don't have a really good answer to because you can't disincentivize teams for playing the most optimal basketball.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Fund your account today.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
I guess we'll see. Basically, anything Hertz does is better than their decisions they made coming out of 2021, because this decision to go all in on electric vehicles was not the right choice. They placed an order for 100,000 Teslas. They wanted to remake their image. We're not a gas guzzling rental fleet company anymore.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
We are this forward looking, modern, environmentally friendly, tech forward company. But the issue was renters kind of hate renting electric vehicles. One, it's that range anxiety. They don't know if they'll be able to fill them up. And then two, they were just difficult to maintain and didn't really hold their resale value that much.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So it's very interesting too, though, that they got bailed out by this very unlikely source of President Trump's tariffs jacking up car prices. I think that is what Ackman is seeing down the line. Is this a more healthy business now than it was a few years ago? Maybe now that they're rolling back that electric vehicle pursuit.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Also rocks, literal rocks, definitely not as fun to eat as marshmallows, but still most of the appeal of dying eggs is just the tradition of it and that you do it with your family. So as long as you keep that going, it doesn't matter if it's actually an egg or a rock or a marshmallow. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you know how some actors just own every scene they're in?
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So just seeing the stock movement, though, that it's still got a little bit of that meme stock culture to it because, I mean, this thing went straight up the past few days. So definitely some remnants of that, of the heyday of its meme stock heights. Yeah.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
My dog of the week is UnitedHealth Group, which sent shockwaves through the insurance industry with a gloomy annual forecast and its first earnings miss in over 10 years yesterday. The company said it was hit with some unforeseen rises in medical costs, which caused them to tear up their forecast they made just three months ago.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Markets did not like the sound of that, and the company fell as much as 20% when markets opened, its biggest drop since 1999.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
UnitedHealth is the largest seller of Medicare health plans, which left it especially vulnerable to both an increased amount of care activity from people using those plans, as well as some payment changes the US government made to crack down on some of the tactics insurers use to boost their profits.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
The disappointing results also stem from Optum Health, the company's clinic, surgery center, and home care division, which had previously been its fastest-growing profit engine. UnitedHealth cut its 2025 revenue forecast for its once cash cow by around $10 billion. So, Neil, a historically bad day for UnitedHealth, one that also dragged down the rest of the Dow with it.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It's not the first McDonald's-inspired burger to even come out of Chili's recently, too. The Big QP is the second one. The first one was this Big Mac-esque burger called the Big Smasher that also kind of rolled out with this very pointed ad campaign that called out the Big Mac. So it is not shying away from these comparisons whatsoever.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And the reason why Chili's feels emboldened to do this is, remember, McDonald's prices kind of have creeped upwards over the last few years as inflation started to impact consumers and
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It actually has hurt McDonald's a lot because now you're competing with someone like Chili's, someone like Chipotle, getting into that fast, casual realm because your prices are no longer low enough that you feel like you're getting a good value. So it's very astute of Chili's to realize that, hey, this market leader is very vulnerable right now. Let's get after it. They are.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Release burgers called the Big QPU. Let's put the exact same toppings on that McDonald's does, and let's call them out. And Chili's is just absolutely crushing it right now, the 31% growth. Its parent company, Brinker International, has seen its stock go up 200% over the past year. So Chili's is just undefeated right now. I'm feeling love in this Chili's tonight.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
That's what Planet Oat does for your breakfast or your coffee or your smoothie. It steps in and suddenly everything becomes richer, smoother, more sophisticated.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
The snack wrap is one of those weird menu items that has a massive cult following. I mean, we were speaking about it. We just have good memories of it. I used to eat 10 of them after soccer practice, but it was discontinued all the way back in 2016, which is wild to think about at this point. because it was just very time consuming to prepare. You had to steam the tortilla.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
You had to assemble multiple ingredients, which slowed down service times. And then also, despite what revisionist history might say, snack wraps didn't meet sales expectations at the time. So even though it is one of those things that people have been clamoring for for almost a decade at this point, it wasn't exactly this big sales juggernaut. That being said,
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
I think it's a great move to release it now. Chicken is having a moment again. Why not capitalize on people's love for this menu item as well? So I do think just the forces of people love chicken and people love snack wrap will kind of make this a pretty successful re-debut. What's your pick on the month that it'll come back?
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Yeah, I don't know if it's like a summer thing. Yeah, midsummer. Snack wraps in the summer sounds pretty good to me. Next up, Taco Bell is living Mas by bringing back Mas Pollo to their menu. Beginning on April 24th, it is reintroducing crispy chicken nuggets to its menu for an extended eight-week run. And if all goes well, its take on nugs could become a permanent menu item by next year.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Heck, even the unsweetened version with zero grams of sugar still tastes like a leading role.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Taco Bell first introduced the seemingly out-of-place item back in December as kind of a novelty expansion beyond its typical offerings. But demand was so high that they sold out of a month's supply of the chicken nuggets in about a week. Neil, remember these things? Taco Bell put their own twist on them.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
All white meat dipped in zesty jalapeno buttermilk, then coated in tortilla chips and breadcrumbs. Plus, they come with a variety of sauces, including a partnership with Hidden Valley for a spicy ranch. I never got the chance to try because they sold out so quickly. which is why Taco Bell is bringing them back.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And they did it right. Like, they put the tortilla chips on the outside. They just added enough that made it feel like a Taco Bell menu item and not just a trend-chasing thing, even though it's a little bit of both. I really do want to try them, though, because it just sounds good. You know, zesty buttermilk ranch, like the ranch sauce itself sounds very delicious.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Our final Fast Food Friday update is that Red Robin Yum is getting mighty generous with its burgers in May. The chain is offering a burger pass today. which is a physical card that pass holders can brandish to get a free burger and bottomless sides daily for the entire month of May. The card will set you back only 20 bucks, but the total value by Red Robin's estimation is $682.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
The impetus behind the invention of the bottomless burger pass is that May is National Burger Month. You'll probably see other restaurants advertising deals of their own, but none as juicy as Red Robin's. Unfortunately, there is one caveat that I have for all you burger-loving listeners out there. I regret to inform you that the passes went on sale at 11 a.m.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Eastern yesterday and sold out in minutes.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It's the sides because you can get bottomless sides. So maybe you bring a friend, you give your friend the burger, and then you have the Caesar salad, the milkshake. There's steamed broccoli, too, if you're feeling rather healthy for that day. Holders get around $22 of value per day. So you really only have to go one time or twice to actually get your value.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
So 10 times, I mean, that was actually on the higher end of what I would expect. I was thinking like once a week maybe for you, but let's... Let's see if you can put your burger where your mouth is.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Let's just dive into the weeds a little bit because it is confusing. This case is about how Google dominates online ad sales. It's not the ads that you see in Google search. It's the ones you see just across the rest of the internet, really. It focuses specifically on its role in this digital display ad market and the behind-the-scenes tech that powers those things.
Morning Brew Daily
Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
What is being challenged here is their dominance in the publisher-side ad tools What's not being challenged is their search advertising business, which accounts for 90% of its overall revenue. Still, that is a sizable revenue chunk that is up for debate here. It accounted for 10% of its revenue last year, $10 billion worth. So it's not nothing, but it's not necessarily this existential thing.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
But yeah, when you add up the two latest monopoly rulings, Google is feeling like, God, we can't catch a break here for at least...
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Yeah, specifically what you're describing there is it breaks antitrust law by engaging the practice called tying, which is forcing customers to use one Google product in order to get access to the other. And so that was one of the things that set off warning bells and caused the judge to rule like they did. So looking ahead here, how does Google kind of navigate these rocky waters?
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Like most of big tech, Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, has been kind of going on this charm offensive with President Trump. He attended his inauguration. And then just last week, Trump told reporters, I love Google. So it does seem like there is a little bit of, you know, love coming from the White House. So that may potentially happen. influence how this case happens.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
But still, second time in eight months that the company has been deemed a monopoly in court. The next big thing to look out for on Google's calendar is not your actual Google calendar. This is Google's actual calendar. They are a case for the remedies of that initial monopoly case begins on Monday next week. So we'll probably give you an update on what is at stake there.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Then Netflix is looking like the calm within the tariff storm. It just reported some tasty first quarter earnings. It's Friday, April 18th. Let's ride.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
That could mean shaving off Google Chrome, which is a big part of its business. So yes, a very, crowded calendar when it comes to monopoly cases, if you are Google. Jerome Powell and President Trump's beef reached new levels yesterday as Trump explicitly called out the Fed chair in a post on Truth Social.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Trump wrote, Powell's termination cannot come fast enough, explaining that Powell is always too late and wrong when it comes to cutting interest rates. What set off Trump's tirade? A speech given by Powell in Chicago the day before where he warned that the size and scope of the trade agenda Trump was pursuing could lead to higher inflation and slower growth than initially expected.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It's left the Fed in what Powell called a challenging scenario. If the Fed leaves rates where they are to restrain inflation, it could worsen the job market. The same goes for vice versa. If it tries to stimulate the economy with a rate cut, it could send inflation skyrocketing again. Of course, the subtext of the tension between Trump and Powell
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
is an upcoming Supreme Court case that could pave the way to the Fed losing its political independence, a longtime crusade of Trump who thinks the president should have more say on rate decisions. The case challenges a little-known ruling from 1935 that prevents the president from firing federal agency officials for political reasons.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
If the Supreme Court rules in the White House's favor, it could bring the Fed under Trump's thumb. So, Neil, this war of words is also heading to the courts with the fate of Fed independence on the line.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Nixon privately was pressuring his Fed chairman, Arthur Burns, to ease policy ahead of his election. Because you're right, these political people think in terms of election years. And that pushed the U.S. into this punishing recession. And the early 1980s were just kind of a disaster. And so the Fed and a lot of central banks around the world kind of pushed for their operational autonomy here.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
gaining the independence that they now have today. And a lot of investors look at Fed independence as a key ingredient to creating this environment to foster lower inflation, less risk, to bring investment into the country. It is the stabilizing force when it comes to U.S. markets.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And so if that comes under much more fickle political power, then you don't have any of those benefits that an independent Fed has granted you.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Netflix reported earnings yesterday, and it turns out you can't tariff. Love is blind. The biggest streamer in the world had another blowout quarter, posting a major earnings beat as revenue grew 13% in Q1 and surpassed $10.5 billion. As tariffs throw other sectors into turmoil, the streaming giant is looking like the calm in the macroeconomic storm.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
There's been no material change to our overall business outlook, the company said in a statement yesterday. Netflix is seen as well-positioned to ride out market turmoil thanks to minimal exposure to tariffs and an ad business that's driving steady growth.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
On top of that, analysts believe subscriptions to the service are among the last thing consumers would cut in a downturn because what's a recession without a little black mirror to calm the nerves? A slight wrinkle to yesterday's report. After ending last year with over 300 million subscribers, yesterday was the first quarter that Netflix did not report subscriber numbers.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
Netflix ditched the once-important metric to focus on revenue and other financial metrics as performance indicators, so investors were happy to see its revenue and other financial metrics indicated very strong performance this quarter. Netflix certainly has some swagger to it right now. Executives share the ambitious goal to reach a $1 trillion market cap and double its revenue by 2030.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
And $1 trillion sounds like a lot for a streaming company, but yesterday was a step in the right direction, Neil.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It does think it's pretty well insulated when it comes to tariffs and a downturn. They, even at a March meeting, Netflix executives acknowledged the fact that the U.S.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
could enter an economic downturn, but they said that streaming could be less affected because people stay home and instead of going out to the movies, they just post up on their couch and watch adolescents watch these big Netflix shows. Also, Netflix saw, this was a different circumstance, but rapid growth during the COVID-19 pandemic recession.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
That was literally because we couldn't leave our homes, but it is a little bit of a data point. And then you can go all the way back to the European Union's recession in 2012. International subscriber additions grew at a more rapid pace during that downturn. So there are some data points that do show that, yes, Netflix was a different business back then.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
It didn't have its advertising tier that is driving a lot of growth today. But there's something about just posting up on your couch, tossing on the TV when times are hard outside of your home that Netflix seems to benefit from. Up next, let's do our Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
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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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
I would draw an impression of the roof of my mouth because I am eating those things, Neil. Definitely a two-to-one ratios of marshmallows decorated to marshmallows consumed. but this trend of finding ways to have some Easter fun without eggs is a fun one. Some moms at a Facebook group were dying potatoes in passing them off as eggs. Not as delicious, but also cost effective.
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Google Ruled a Monopoly… Again? & Netflix Takes Closer Step to $1T
On Public, you can build a multi-asset investment portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Even if you never tuned into a Brewers game, you likely know Euchre for his iconic cameos in sports cinema. His just-a-bit-outside call from Major League is as quotable as they come. Norm MacDonald thought Euchre was one of the funniest men he ever met, and I encourage you all to go look up his appearances on the Johnny Carson's Tonight Show to corroborate Norm's claim.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
It propelled Nintendo to its most profitable era ever, but it's been out since 2017 and momentum in sales are lagging, causing Nintendo's profits to hit a banana peel. So analysts are hoping that the Switch 2 can power a comeback both in the hardware and in the game sales divisions.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
And they are taking a safer approach than Nintendo has in the past because they are using a familiar silhouette. They're kind of just updating the Switch 1 instead of redesigning a whole new form factor, which in the past the company has definitely done. It has had some big swings and some big misses. What comes to mind is the Wii U following up the Wii, the Nintendo GameCube as well.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Both were flops compared to their competitors. so maybe in an effort to just say we need to revive sales a little bit, let's go with what we know works instead of trying to redesign an entirely new gaming system like they have in the past.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Well, the Wii. That was the only console I had growing up. I didn't have an Xbox and we didn't have anything. My parents weren't big video games people, so they fell for the propaganda of, oh, they're going to be moving while they play it.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Yeah, there was definitely a magnifying glass on this latest earnings call for the reasons that you just described, but also because there is right now a lot of pressure on the healthcare industry as a whole. UnitedHealth's annual medical cost ratio, which is actually the percent of premiums it pays out for medical care, Care, that hit 85% this quarter.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Then the founder behind the infamous short seller Hindenburg Research is shutting the firm down. It's Friday, January 17th. Let's ride.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
It's usually the industry average is around 80% historically. So that highlights the problem that a lot of these healthcare companies are beginning to face, and that is higher medical costs due to more demand from aging Americans, more Americans utilizing these Medicare plans. So there's definitely some nervousness around the industry right now as these medical cost ratio continue to creep upwards.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
There will never quite be a Mr. Baseball like him. Now a word from our sponsor, Public.com. Neil, you ever use any LLMs or AI chatbots?
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Yeah, Besant stuck pretty closely to the preferred talking points, Trump's preferred policies. His big kind of things that he spoke about were the 2017 tax cuts. He called extending those the single most important economic issue of the day. And he warned that failing to extend them would represent...
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
A huge tax increase on a lot of Americans that he says he called it the largest tax increase in history on Americans. So definitely tariffs is going to be a talking point.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
But then these tax cuts are probably going to be some of the storylines that will be swirling around Besant as he kind of eases in, assuming he gets approved, the nomination gets approved, as we ease into these first hundred days of the Trump administration. Zin lovers rejoice your favorite lip pillows aren't in danger of getting taken off the shelves anytime soon.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
The FDA formally authorized the nicotine pouches yesterday after conceding they were safe through testing. The big finding that went in Zin's favor is that they posed a lower risk of cancer and other health conditions when compared to cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. Not only are they better, but the evidence also showed that Zin's could help smokers quit the habit as well.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Neil, this was a big win for Zinn and a big win for everyone who loves a cheeky little upper-decky from time to time.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Well, maybe you just haven't found the right one yet. Publix AI Assistant Alpha is just like your typical chatbot like ChatGPT, but specifically for investing.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Tubi is way bigger than I thought. Nearly 100 million monthly active users is a sizable figure. And yes, this is the Super Bowl coming to the streaming era. The one caveat that needs to be mentioned here is that you do need to make an account if you want to stream the Super Bowl. So you won't be able to just tune in online or tune in on your TV. You have to have a Tubi.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
I think I just have the throwaway email that you sign up for all the accounts with. But yeah, this is no longer just a linear TV story. Streaming era has definitely come to the Super Bowl. And yeah, if people are having flashbacks to that one ad, everyone's like, is my TV broken? What's going on here? So Tubi kind of occupies some headspace in a lot of sports fans' minds.
Morning Brew Daily
Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
For our final headline, remember when we talked this week about the rise of the Chinese TikTok-like app Red Note? Users flocked to it as this semi-ironic protest of TikTok's potential ban, running willingly into the embrace of the Chinese-owned platform. But they also ran right into an app interface that is entirely in Mandarin, which has proved to be a boon for Duolingo.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
The language learning app has experienced a 216% surge in new Mandarin learners in the US, driven by Red Notes Rise. Duolingo isn't complaining, though. It also saw a 36% rise in U.S. downloads and has cashed in with some seriously viral posts on X2, with one reading, oh, so now you're learning Mandarin, getting 15 million impressions.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Want to know why a specific stock is moving? Ask Alpha. Curious about a company's most recent earnings call? Ask Alpha.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Either have I, but my brother and his girlfriend use it, and they're like, ba-bing! it's a very you know recognizable tone I hear on the subways too so it's one of those things that once you start using it it's a very viral and a sticky app because you want to keep your streak going so once you kind of make the plunge to learning language I do think it kind of captures you
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
I want you to share today's podcast with someone who wants some long weekend listening as well. Monday is MLK Junior Day and we recorded a special holiday interview episode with Phil Andrews from Maxonomics. We talked about everything from autonomous vehicles to tariffs to why Chipotle could overtake McDonald's soon.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
So share this episode with your friends so they get to listen to that wonderful episode as well.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Check out public.com slash morningbrew and get some alpha from Alpha. Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in podcast description. Our first story goes out to all the short kings out there, and I'm not just talking about height.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Nate Anderson, the man behind the famed short-selling firm Hindenburg Research, tossed in the towel saying he was closing his firm due to the stresses of the job.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Hindenburg made a name for itself by going after the giants of the corporate world, including the Indian conglomerate Adani Group, the once high-flying hydrogen truck startup Nikola, and household names like Carvana, Icon Enterprises, and Jack Dorsey-owned Block. Between Block, Adani Group, and Icon Enterprises...
Morning Brew Daily
Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Hindenburg's deeply researched reports knocked as much as $173 billion off their market value. It's not easy to destroy that much value amidst one of the best bull runs U.S. equities have seen in decades, but Hindenburg's approach created a loyal following that allowed it to punch above its weight. Not all of its shots hit its target, though.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Since publishing a report about Roblox in October, the children's game platform has seen its stock rise 50%, and shares of its most recent target, Carvana, have recovered and are up about 5% this month.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Still, it's going to be weird living in a world without a Hindenburg report randomly dropping from the clouds and causing a ruckus kneel and shows that activist short sellers are increasingly becoming a dying breed.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Yeah, I mean, for a long time, short sellers have been advised by their lawyers that as long as your reports that you issue contain no material inaccuracies and are not based on inside information, you're pretty much in the clear. But again, they are these destructive forces in the financial world.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
So, of course, some of the companies that are the targets of short sellers do start to push back, do stop. do try to pursue legal action against them. So they aren't loved, nor are they very well understood. But Hindenburg kind of bucked that trend a little bit.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
I think it's because its big break was taking on Nikola Motors, which this was just kind of emblematic of that time, is that 2020-2021 era where these SPACs were these high-flying companies. Hindenburg looked under the hood of Nikola Motors and found that in a lot of their videos, they weren't even powering their trucks via the ways that they were supposed to be powered.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
They were rolling them down hills. And those sort of revelations kind of endeared people to Hindenburg because then they were seen as this small upstart firm going after these potentially fraudulent companies, which is why it created sort of this cult following, just emblematic of that cult following.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Nate Anderson signed off by sending his team this link to a deep house set by this British DJ in Bali. It's this very nice video, but if you go and look at those top comments, most of them are mentioning Hindenburg, saying, RIP Hindenburg, we loved you. So that sort of kind of love for short sellers, not something you see very often. It was unique to Hindenburg.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Who knows? There was a lot of reasons to doubt Blue Origin before this because they literally had not gotten anything up into orbit in 25 years. It is kind of wild to think about how much kind of airtime we've thought about Blue Origin, but how little they'd actually accomplished. So this did silence a lot of those initial doubters because even though Blue Origin has been lagging behind,
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
NASA is counting on New Glenn to actually deliver two spacecraft into orbit around Mars, so it has a contract with them. The US military also has a few contracts with Blue Origin as well. Blue Origin has also poured a ton of money into getting its ambitions off the ground. They've put $1 billion into New Glenn's launch site. It's near historic Cape Canaveral. So there's a lot on the line here.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
They needed to get something into orbit, and they finally got it off the ground. The mission didn't go perfectly. They weren't able to land the booster like SpaceX has done in the past, but they did have a successful orbital mission, which is really the main purpose of this latest launch.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
And we did have a little bit of a frenemy moment or just a friendly moment between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Elon Musk did congratulate Blue Origin. He wrote, congratulations on reaching orbit on the first attempt. And then we had some nice parallelism as well because SpaceX launched its Starship yesterday. It was a little bit of a mixed bag.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
They actually lost communication with Starship, which led to it breaking up in orbit, which also led to some really cool pictures. It looked like a full-on meteor shower as this Starship broke up, but they did end up catching their heavy booster with the chopsticks again, which is just always a very cool thing to watch.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
So it was almost the perfect antithesis to the new Glenn launch, which successfully completed their orbital mission, but wasn't able to catch their booster. SpaceX did the exact opposite. So maybe if you're NASA, you're like, well, in aggregate, we had a pretty good day here.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Either that or his version of Dune, which is also iconic, albeit for different reasons. It's become a little bit of a cult classic because of just how weird and over the top it is. But yeah, David Lynch, an absolute legend. We also lost Bob Euchre, the iconic announcer known as Mr. Baseball, who is the voice of the Milwaukee Brewers for over 50 years. He was 90 years old.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Yeah, I mean, there's definitely cycles when it comes to hiring. I mean, after the big tech bubble popped, you saw the share of MBA grads going into tech drop precipitously. So it is a cyclical industry and a cyclical business.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
And also, just because you have a fancy MBA and a fancy degree next to your name doesn't mean you're completely immune to the difficulties experienced in this job market right now. It still is a pretty... Even though we have had great jobs data coming out, it is... not necessarily the most gangbusters job market that we've seen.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
So of course, you're going to feel a little bit of pressure, just like every other person trying to get a job is feeling. It's a two-sided marketplace too. If Amazon, if Google, if the McKinsey's, if the Bains of the world don't want to hire people, if they are cutting back, of course, you're going to see people lagging on the job market as well.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
So I don't know if it's an existential threat or if it's just a cyclical thing, but whatever's happening, less MVAs are getting hired.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
It's Friday, which means it is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where Neil and I pick one stock that is struggling with prolonged flu-like symptoms, and one stock that has had a clean bill of health. Neil, you fought hard, but I won the pre-show chess boxing match, so I'm up first.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
And my Stock of the Week is Nintendo, because the Japanese video game maker finally has a new console coming out. After eight long years, Nintendo unveiled the successor to its popular Switch console, the Switch 2.
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Short Seller Hindenburg Closes Up Shop & Bezos Enters the Space Race
Set to launch later this year, the hybrid console will feature a 7-inch screen and redesigned controllers that attach to side ports magnetically instead of sliding in mechanically like the original model. The Switch 2 is a big deal for Nintendo, but also the wider gaming industry. The first edition of the device is the second best-selling console of all time behind just the PlayStation 2.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Then Dick's Sporting Goods is trying to become Dick's Sporting Great, snapping up Foot Locker in a multi-billion dollar deal. It's Friday, May 16th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, it used to be everyone knew UnitedHealth Group because it just dominated the Dow Jones so much. Because remember, the Dow Jones is price-weighted, which is just an interesting way to form an index at all. And UnitedHealth always had the highest share price. However it went, basically the Dow went.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
But for most of its history, it just doesn't really go that much of anywhere because it's just this big, hulking monolith that is just... always been what it's been, but now it is just so numerous, the amount of issues that it has faced. Like we've talked about it multiple times and we're like, we have to do it for dog of the week.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
It's simply wiped out half of its value, which is just doesn't, not something you see at the upper echelons of the Dow Jones at the upper echelons of the healthcare business at all. Just pretty wild to watch happen in real time.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
We'll see if people stop rolling them long enough to actually use it. Now, a word from our sponsor, Iterable. Neil, you ever done the New York City airport mix-up? Toby, no.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
For this next story, I haven't seen a supposedly fake document make this many waves at Harvard Law since Mike from Suits faked his diploma. Harvard Law has been sitting on a supposed copy of the Magna Carta that they bought for just $27.50 decades ago. But it turns out that copy is actually an extremely rare original that dates back to 1300.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Even more wild was how someone eventually made the discovery. David Carpenter, a professor of medieval history at King's College London, was just sifting through old internet archives looking for copies of the important document when he pulled up Harvard Laws and did a double take.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
First, he was surprised that he had found one of the most rare documents and most significant documents in world constitutional history. But secondly, he added, he felt, astonished that Harvard had been sitting on it for all these years without realizing what it was.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
For those of you who nodded off during eighth grade history class, the Magna Carta is regarded as one of the earliest declarations of human rights, established the principle that the king is not above the rule of law, and has gone on to form the backbone of constitutions globally.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
So the fact that just one of seven copies dating back to this 1300 version somehow went undetected until now is wild to think about, especially when you consider who is in custody of the document. Neil, I'm about to start leafing through my own files to see if I've missed anything.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Well, so do I, but one time I thought I was flying out of JFK. Turns out my flight was at LaGuardia. Nothing worse than rushing to security to find your gate, only to realize you're 13 miles away from where you need to be.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
maybe just early on Berkshire Hathaway. But I did want to know, how did Carpenter just know immediately that this was the real document?
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Apparently, there's a few telltale signs, but one of the biggest ones was the style of handwriting and the big E at the start of the first line, which apparently is, if you are trained in this sort of thing, it's just like a neon green flashing light that says, hey, this is a real copy because only this particular period was written or copied in this particular handwriting. So
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
I can't imagine going through and doing the double take, zooming in. That moment must have just been pure electricity going through his body because apparently he was looking at a copy, but he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is the real deal, baby.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, it's going to be chaos, especially when you look at the concert schedule coming at MetLife Stadium. First, there's a Shakira concert on both Thursday and Friday. And then also Beyonce and The Weeknd are coming to the venue over the next three weeks.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
So unless you iron it out, those Uber prices are just going to go nuts because it's reliably the only way you can actually get to the stadium at that point. So we'll see. Pay is the big issue here. We'll see if they can come to a deal. Hopefully before Monday.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
AI progress might not be as parabolic of a line as we were all expecting. Meta just announced that it is delaying the rollout of its newest flagship model over concerns that Behemoth, as it's called, isn't that much better than prior versions. Originally, April was the planned launch date before shifting the launch to June. Now Meta is saying at least fall or even later.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Iterable fixes that. It ditches the old-school campaign calendar and replaces it with AI-driven, moment-based marketing. So you're not guessing where your customer might be.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
And Meta is not alone in these training stumbles. GPT-5, the next iteration of OpenAI's everyday model, was supposed to drop around mid-2024, but in February, Altman said that the model was still months behind. So Neil, some nervy times at big AI companies that have plowed billions of dollars into training these things and need to see improvements to justify the costs.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, to make this treatment work, scientists wrap the treatment in tiny fat molecules that protect it while it travels through the bloodstream to, in this case, target the liver. Inside those fat molecules are two main things. One, instructions that tell the cells to make special enzymes that actually end up editing the genes. And then two, basically a genetic GPS, which is CRISPR.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
CRISPR searches through a person's DNA, literally like a bloodhound looking for the exact spot where one tiny tiny letter often needs to be changed to make the necessary fixes here. And so this treatment is just one thing that it's very particular to KJ in this point, but you can see how it has broad applications beyond that.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, because KJ's disease only affects 1 in 1.3 million people, so of course it doesn't seem economically viable. But when you add up all the KJs of the world, suddenly there are 30 million people in the U.S. alone that suffer from one of these rare 7,000 genetic diseases. So you can see how the problem is much bigger than just this one baby.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Don't show up at the wrong terminal. Visit endthecampaign.com and start meeting your customers exactly where they are.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, Walmart is just so good at dodging price hikes, which is why it was concerning to hear them saying that they're going to hike some prices. One, it is very good at doing this because it has massive leverage with its vendors. It's just so big. Two, it sources two-thirds of its merchandise in the U.S., groceries making up the majority of that.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
And three, it can keep the cost of everyday items like those groceries low because it can raise prices on other items like electronics and household goods. So groceries account for roughly 60% of its business, which is where consumers would feel the most impact, the most bite from those price hikes.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
So the fact it can keep those prices in check will probably lead to actually a similar pattern post-2008. Walmart emerged from that financial crisis. with an even bigger market share, even more brand loyalty, because it was able to keep those staples low.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
So we're almost seeing a similar pattern emerge here, where keep the everyday items where they're at, but then raise prices elsewhere across the business to offset those.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
And we did get some government data to parse through. U.S. retail sales growth slowed in April to just 0.1%. That is coming off of a revised 1.7% gain in March, which is actually the largest in two years. But what is that actually showing?
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
It's showing that a lot of these retailers, or a lot of consumers, front-loaded those purchases ahead of these tariffs coming in and then started cutting back in April. So we'll see what government data shows. paints a picture of once we also pair it with private companies like Target, Best Buy, etc.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Dick's Sporting Goods went on a shopping spree yesterday and snapped up Foot Locker for $2.4 billion, but investors are taking a long, hard look at the acquisition. The idea behind adding Foot Locker into the fold is for Dick's to expand its influence on the sneaker world and also internationally where Foot Locker has stores in 20 countries.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
It also gives Dick's a big leg up in the wholesale market, particularly with Nike. Nike's big partners are Dick's, Foot Locker, and JD Sports. So bringing two of those brands together gives Dick's significant leverage over Nike at a time when its business is especially reliant on wholesale. However, not everyone is sold on the synergies.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Dick's stock fell 14% yesterday as investors digested the big swing. First, there's antitrust concerns from two big sports brands teaming up. And also, most of Foot Locker's store footprint is located in malls, which are more exposed to economic downturns. So, Neil, some see the acquisition as buying low. Others see it as a strategic mistake.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
I see a chance to change the name of the combined company to Foot Dick's Sporting Locker.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, but you can see where Dick's is coming from here. Foot Locker's client base tends to skew younger. Young kids like going in there shopping for the new cool sneakers. Dick's customer base typically is suburban older people because that's the only – place where these giant sporting palaces can exist. So I think they are being lured by the sirens call of a younger customer base as well.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
And then also Foot Locker did just recently hire a new CEO from Ulta Beauty back in 2022. And she's kind of expanded Ulta's retail experience online and is trying to apply the same sort of principles to Foot Locker. So there's an e-commerce angle there as well. So
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Again, you could take the TD cow inside because this is a business that is exposed to a lot of different Pressures from tariffs from you know, just the fact that no one really shops at malls anymore Or you could just see it as buying low. So you do see two sides of the of the coin here. Oh
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
All right, it's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where Neil and I pick one stock from the week's news who figured out the New York Times Thursday crossword without hints, and one stock who needed a little help to figure out that theme. Neil, I actually lost the pre-show game of onion dicing because my eyes were watering too much. So you are up first.
Morning Brew Daily
Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
My takeaway is I would also stink on the prices, right? So no shade to these people whatsoever, but the hits just keep coming for the Apple Vision Pro. The Wall Street Journal wrote a deep dive on early adopters of the technology who have now had the device for over a year, and it was tough to read. Here are a smattering of quotes from the piece. It's just collecting dust.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Yeah, when they were added to the S&P 500, we're like, oh, lock for stock of the week. Like, it's fine. And then as the week progressed, these news stories kept dropping. We're like, ah, I don't know. It still is up for the week. So we're like, all right, we'll put it in the stock of the week column. Let's talk about this hack, though.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
On Thursday, they reported that cyber criminals based overseas were using social engineering to steal customer data by attacking support agents located overseas. And they said that the incident could cause up to $400 million to fix. But it's not the worst thing in the world because no passwords and private keys were compromised. And so that's the bread and butter of an exchange like Coinbase.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
So definitely not a headline that you want right on the heels of you joining the S&P 500, but unfortunately one that they have to deal with right now.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
We really should have made Coinbase both the stock of the week and then come out of break and say, hey, never mind. It's also our dog of the week. It could have been both. Up next, let's actually do our dog of the week. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity. And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases. There are no points to calculate, no limits or deadlines. Plus, it's super easy to access my card and make payments from the wallet app of my iPhone.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
If that sounds like the kind of simplicity you want in a credit card, apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app on your iPhone. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Brands. Terms and more at applecard.com. If you're working on building out your portfolio, check out public.com.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
I think I've probably used it four times in the last year. It's still way too heavy. I wouldn't recommend anyone buying it unless you're really rich and you don't know what to do with your money. Despite all of that, though, Apple is still shipping updates to this product. They just announced a new feature that lets you scroll with your eyes.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
United Health Group has been an absolute lock for dog of the week as things went from worse to worser for the nation's biggest healthcare company. First, longtime CEO Andrew Witte stepped down for personal readings leading to a double-digit drop in the stock. Then the Wall Street Journal reported that the DOJ had opened a criminal probe into the company for possible Medicare fraud.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
That came on the heels of investors suing UHG this month for allegedly downplaying the business impact of the December killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. It's all led to a stock route almost unfathomable for a company of UnitedHealth's size and scope.
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Walmart Warns of Tariff Price Hikes & Dick’s Sporting Goods' Risky $2.4B Deal
Over the last month, the stock is down 53%, shaving off more than $300 billion from its market cap and leading to a growing crisis of confidence over the most influential player in American healthcare. Neil, this company was once the most influential stock in the Dow Jones by weighting, but now it has fallen to 16th. Pretty shocking.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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,
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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. 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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Or a headache the next morning.
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You've got two options with Delta, 5mg for a light social buzz, or 20mg 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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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'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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Trump Doubles Down on Tariffs & Robinhood Cashes In On Crypto
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
That's slightly more natural to talk to. It can remember and refer back to past interactions. It also is teaming up with Samsung to try to take on Meta in this resurgent market for smart glasses and VR headsets, which is ironic because we're almost a decade removed from its first attempt in Google Glass that went very, very poorly.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Es hat auch das neue AI genCAT, ein Wetter-Prediktionsmodell, mit dem man 15 Tage vor dem Wetter-Vorgang präsentieren kann. Und du hast auch das Quantum Computing-Programm erwähnt, das Willow-Chip, das die Error-Rate in Quantum Computing reduziert.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
All of a sudden, we were just looking back at Google and said, they rolled out a ton of products here that are doing very well and suddenly changed the entire narrative around this company when it comes to AI.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Following the spate of negative press connected to the assassination of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, names like CVS, Cigna and United Health Group continued to struggle this week. A bipartisan group of senators pushed things from bad to worse when they introduced a bill that could result in the breakup of some of these healthcare giants.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
The bill goes after the middlemen of the drug world, pharmacy benefit managers. It would force health insurance companies and PBMs to break off their pharmacy businesses within three years or face penalties.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a press release that the fact that healthcare companies can own both PBMs and pharmacies are, quote, a gross conflict of interest that enables these companies to enrich themselves at the expense of patients and independent pharmacies.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
So in addition to trading lower in the days after Thompsons killing, healthcare stocks are now facing some serious heat in Congress as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Und bis jetzt ist es so gut. Ich habe nichts Schlimmes vor mir, wenn ich meine Alarm auf, weißt du, Sounds like you're a pit boss at a Formula One race. Oh, I wish. I'd take down Red Bull for sure. But no, visibility and speed are in reference to Sage. If you are a finance pro, you need greater visibility and control over your entire business and Sage can give that to you.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Yeah, I mean, you just got to go and look at what the people are saying. A Gallup poll said that only 19% of Americans are satisfied with the cost of healthcare. I think a lot of people would say, who are that 19%? Because a lot of people do feel like the system is not built to support the people who need the care their most.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
And then all you have to do is point to the stock gains that these companies have seen in the past two decades. Over the last 20 years, United Health Group, it's up 1,200%. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Oh, that is a good, fun fact, actually. I've always wanted to ring the bell. We have been to the New York Stock Exchange. It is a very cool place. I do want to talk about him winning Time Magazine's Person of the Year, though. There were some people saying it comes with an asterisk because...
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Tell me if you think that he's a system Time Person of the Year candidate, because each of the last seven presidential election years and four of the seven before that have been named Time Person of the Year. Whoever won the White House became Time Person of the Year. So all you got to do is win the White House, which I mean, I guess is quite the feat to be named Time Person of the Year.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
The President seems to have an inside track to that award. YouTube TV, you done messed up. The streaming TV provider set off a firestorm of negativity yesterday after it announced another price hike, bringing its monthly cost to $83, a 137% increase from its 2017 launch price.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
The $10 hike has subscribers seeing red and set off this big brouhaha online with a lot of people, citing YouTube TV's shift from an affordable streaming alternative to what feels a lot like traditional cable pricing. Es gibt keine neuen Inhalte, aber es scheint, dass sie ihre Karten bezahlen müssen. YouTube TV hat 2 Billionen Dollar pro Jahr bezahlt.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Das ist der Grund, warum die Internet-Internet-Internet-Internet-Internet-Internet-Internet-Internet
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Apparently not. You said you just went to Wicked and in the previews you saw Sonic 3 advertised and you swore you heard Jim Carrey's voice, which is what set off kind of like this whole headline because it makes sense. He seems like someone who wouldn't need to work anymore.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
He has quite the movie catalog, but you know, money doesn't grow on trees unless you suddenly wake up and become God, as Jim Carrey has once done before. But now that we're talking Jim Carrey, I need to know your favorite Jim Carrey movies.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Es war interessant, Jim Carrey als derjenige zu sehen, der gesagt hat, ich brauche das Geld hier, weil er sehr glücklich in seiner Verwaltungszeit war. Es scheint, als hätte er alles hinter sich gelegt, aber die Karten sind aufgeräumt und man muss Geld bezahlen.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
I want you to share this podcast with someone who's been having a little bit of bad luck recently. It is Friday the 13th. Someone in your life has probably been going through it. So toss on this episode to cheer them up and let them know things do turn around.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
If you want visibility and control over your entire business and want to be faster in all your core financial capabilities, head to sage.com for more info. That's sage.com. If you thought the dating scene was tough right now, the National Labor Relations Board is here to shake things up even more.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
The NLRB issued a complaint this week suggesting that the love seekers on the Netflix reality show Love is Blind were Ja, genau. If the show's contestants are employees and not contractors, that could lead to unionization, better pay and less restrictive non-compete clauses. Neil, maybe what these contestants need in their life was less blind love and more labor protections.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
There's a lot of wild stuff that happens on screen. That's kind of par for the course and it's what the producers of the show want.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
So these production companies that put on the shows always want to reduce their exposure, reduce their exposure to litigation because so that's where you get these very tightly worded, these very tightly written contracts, usually with these confidentiality provisions, also with these other restrictions. And so one big one that the NLRB pointed out was Ja, genau.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Then 10 wings doused in hot sauce may have just saved BuzzFeed. It's Friday, December 13th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Das haben die Wettbewerber nicht verstanden. Sie hatten auch das No-Show-File, dass sie, wenn sie das Show verlassen, 50.000 Dollar zahlen müssen. Und dann war auch nur der Preis ein bisschen niedrig. Manche Leute sagten, sie hätten 1.000 Dollar pro Woche Stipend.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Und wenn man durch die Zeit, die sie auf dem Set verbracht haben, ging, waren sie unter der Minimumwage, 7 Dollar pro Stunde, basierend auf dem ganzen Zeitraum, in dem sie arbeiteten. Also haben sich viele dieser verschiedenen Angelegenheiten ergänzt, und deshalb wurde die NLRB involviert.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Neal, danke, dass du die Hände nach unten hältst. Du bist ein Ein-Mann-Band, ein Solo-Akt, eine unglaubliche Leistung gestern.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Ich denke, dass BuzzFeed die Arme ausgedrückt hat, um den Körper zu retten. In diesem Fall, ja, Hot Ones war ihr bussiestes und wahrscheinlich am meisten bekanntes Gebäude, aber sie sind in einer Verlängerung. Sie mussten ein paar Ziele machen. Sie mussten Geld aus dem Banken bekommen, damit sie diese Interestspartien machen können.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Jetzt ist nur noch BuzzFeed übrig, der echte Website, den du von den Liste-Kolls und Quizzes und Celebrity-News kennst, die du früher oft gemacht hast. Sie haben HuffPost, was ein neues Website ist, und dann haben sie auch Tasty, das Food-Vertical. Und das ist es jetzt. Sie haben Hot Ones entfernt. Sie gehen nun in das, was ihr CEO Jonah Peretti nennt, neue, AI-gerichtete interaktive Erfahrungen.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Er bettet also sehr viel auf AI. Ich glaube, man kann nicht eine AI-Version von Sean Evans haben. Bei Hot Ones ist Soros mitgekommen. Das ist ein Konklammerat von Soros-Firmen. Das klingt seltsam, weil George Soros mehr als 7 Billionen Dollar wert ist. Er ist ein großer Proponent von liberalen Gründen. So why are they owning this celebrity interview show?
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
They have been moving into the media space in past years. The Soros Empire is now run by his son Alex. He acquired a minority stake in Crooked Media, which is the media company behind Pod Save America. They also have a controlling stake in Odyssey, which is this radio company. So they have been making inroads into the media company.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
This is now another crown jewel that they're adding to their portfolio.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Yeah, Hugh Jackman, Ryan Reynolds went on to promote Deadpool and Wolverine. That pulled in 31 million views. Ariana Grande was recently on to promote Wicked, 8.3 million. Paul Mezcal, only 1.9 million. Come on, Paul, get those numbers up. All time though, on the all time list, I was wondering who is the most famous Hotline guest. And it is Gordon Ramsay with 129 million views.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Du hast recht, es ist fast die Late-Night-Television als der go-to-Stop, der de facto-Stop, wenn du ein Celebrity bist, weil es einfach eine sehr dedizierte Publikation hat. Es stellt Celebrities in einen tollen Szenario. Du kannst sie sehen. Jeder hat schon mal Spice-Food probiert, also ist es sehr vergleichbar. Und dann hat Sean Evans auch diese tollen, tiefen Fragen zu ihnen gefragt.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Du hast also völlig recht, dass es Teil des Late-Night-Media-Apparatus ist, in einer Art, die ich glaube, niemand hätte vorsehen können, wenn es vor zehn Jahren angefangen hätte. New Jersey Residents, are your necks sore?
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
People living in the Garden State have reported a rash of mysterious drone sightings over the past few weeks, prompting wild explanations for their presence ranging from foreign motherships to aliens. These drones have been described as larger than your typical hobbyist models and are often seen flying over critical infrastructure like reservoirs, airports and military bases.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Witnesses described the drones as being about the size of bicycles or even small cars, with some seen flying in clusters late at night. Understandably, residents have called on public officials to figure out what the heck is going on. Yesterday, the White House's National Security Communications Advisor, John Kirby, assured the public that there is no threat to public safety or national security.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
But the same day, Senator Richard Blumensahl hat gesagt, dass sie, wenn es notwendig, geschlossen werden sollten. Ein Gefühl, das von zwei New Jersey-Kongressmannen, Chris Smith und Jeff Van Drew, die sich auf die Militärin angerufen haben, um sie auch zu schießen. Die FBI hat vorliegend eine Investition geöffnet, um die Residenz zu fragen, welche Videos und Fotos sie haben können.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Es ist das ganze Ding geworden und der einzige Konsens, Neil, ist, dass niemand wirklich weiß, was sie sind.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
I mean, there is this background context of an increased interest in UFOs, but as the government classifies them as UAPs, which are Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon. There have been two major hearings this year on UAPs held in front of Congress, where leaders are just calling for greater transparency from the Pentagon.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
So I think you can't talk about these things without also talking around the greater interest at the governmental level when it comes to UAPs, UFOs, whatever you want to call them. So Bis wir herausfinden, was das ist, ist es immer nur eine große Frage.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Wir haben heute Morgen gesprochen und sie denken, die einzige mögliche Erklärung ist nur, dass ein Hobbyist einen wirklich großen Drohnen hat und es nur fliegt und die Leute sind über das verrückt.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Aber bis du Antworten hast, dann gibt es wirklich nichts, was du sagen kannst, außer dass du hoffst, dass es nicht die nationalen Sicherheit beeinflusst oder nicht eine Bedrohung von einem anderen Land ist, von dem der Pentagon gesagt hat, dass er es nicht glaubt. Aber bis einer dieser Drohnen aus dem Himmel ausgetragen wird und überprüft wird, wissen wir einfach nicht.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Up next, it's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
Ich meine, ich bin durchgegangen, weil ich mich gefragt habe, ob ich irgendwelche Überstimmungen habe. Und ich habe Routinen, wie ich meine Alarm auf die gleiche Zeit jeden Morgen setze. Ich lege immer meine Kleider aus, die Nacht vorher. Aber ich denke, ich erkenne, dass es sich nur von Routine zu Überstimmung bewegt, wenn etwas Schlimmes passiert, nach der Entfernung von dieser Routine.
Morning Brew Daily
Are Reality TV Stars…Employees? & ‘Hot Ones’ Sold For $82M
It really was a great week for Google. Go back to even earlier this year and it seemed like the AI revolution was passing it by. It was falling behind in this critical race, but now... A lot of things are going on at Google that will get you reason to be excited. They have another project called Project Astra, which introduces a virtual assistant like a Siri, like an Alexa.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
They're also a U.S.-based company and member of FINRA with an award-winning customer support team trusted by millions. Generate fixed income with a suite of yield accounts like Public's high-yield cash account set at an industry-leading 4.1% APY.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Obviously, anything my boy Hans Zimmer touches is a must, but I'm glad The Goat already basically has a worldwide concert. tour going. Lord of the Rings, solid. Harry Potter, solid. I think it's just any character where the soundtrack feels like a character in the movie. Star Wars is another good one. I'm just going through the basics right now. I don't have any very niche movie soundtracks that
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
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.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Head to marketplace.walmart.com slash MBD to get started. That's marketplace.walmart.com slash MBD. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, where Neil and I take you through one stock that's the equivalent of Rory McIlroy's front nine on Thursday and one stock that is the equivalent of his back nine. Neil, you won the pre-show game of who can name the most types of salad dressings.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Great poll with chimichurri vinaigrette, so you're up first. And since this has been a rocky week in the market, to say the least, let's start with our Dog of the Week.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I mean, this definitely was a rollercoaster week for pharma stocks, Neil. First, there was the down. Trump said at a dinner that he would soon levy major tariffs on drug imports. But then there was this brief moment of celebration on Wednesday when the 90-day pause announcement came in. That was quickly dashed, though, because that celebration... basically had to be cut short.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Scott Pesent clarified that the pause on tariffs only applied to country-specific reciprocal tariffs, while then White House Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt confirmed that the administration is still planning to announce pharmaceutical tariffs in the near term.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
And then a lot of analysts said specifically that they're anticipating high tariffs on, quote, pharma tax haven countries like Ireland, where these companies set up headquarters in order to try to evade some taxes coming out of the United States. So those haven countries are not going to be spared.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
And analysts are saying that they're possibly expecting higher than the April 2nd figures to be applied to these industry of pharma. My stock of the week is fake proposals because there's a new ring pop factory popping up in Moosic, Pennsylvania.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Ring Pop is owned by Bazooka Brands, which is owned by a private equity firm, which helped fund the new factory that replaces the OG Ring Pop factory in nearby Scranton. Why the second factory? Well, mainly because the old factory in Scranton was unexpectedly shuttered last year, after the literal floor shifted due to there being a lot of mine shafts located beneath the building's foundation.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
But also, an upgrade was probably in order. Bazooka, which also makes baby bottle pops and bazooka gum, is forecasting $100 million in sales this year. The new factory is roughly four times larger than the old one, capable of producing 1.5 million candies per day. Neil, lots of people suck, but it seems like they're sucking on Ring Pops.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
We are definitely seeing candy makers who make kind of traditional or old school candy having their moment right now. I mean, Blow Pop owner just expanded their factory in Tennessee. They invested $100 million in that. So you're seeing these classic candy makers kind of saying, why are we so popular right now? There is like this kind of backwards looking vibe to it. But you are right. There is...
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
edible entertainment sounds like a funny thing but the bazooka ceo says we're not just a hand to mouth candy there's stuff that happens in betwixt that moment of just putting it in your mouth like sliding it on your ring you know pretending that you're getting engaged that whole aspect to it is something that a lot of people are still resonating with to this day this also reminds me of we talked about this i think it was last year at this point the viral tiktok candy of
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
mango peelable candies, which is you took the skin off and you ate the skin and also the fleshy inside of the mango. Those went viral. And it's a similar thing. It's like an active approach to eating candy. You're not just popping them in their mouth. You're doing something else along the way before the sugar rush hits you.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Now let's sprint to the finish with our final headlines and a move straight out of Seinfeld. President Trump signed an executive order to give showerheads, yes, showerheads, a serious boost in water pressure. I like to take a nice shower to take care of my beautiful hair, President Trump said earlier this week in the Oval Office, and went on to rail against the current state of showers.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It's ridiculous. Trump's crusade against weak showerheads has been a longstanding battle that dates back to an Obama-era definition of a showerhead. In his first term, Trump increased the amount of water that showers with multiple nozzles could utilize.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Biden later reversed that change, but now Trump has played another uno reverse card. Neil, if you can't boost tariff rates any further, you might as well boost water pressure.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Now a word from our sponsor, Tax Act. Neil, do you remember that feeling in school when you'd realize a huge paper was due tomorrow?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I just think it's a good idea and one that Lorne Michaels and SNL has been trying for decades now. SNL has actually franchised itself numerous times. The longest running global adaptation of SNL is actually in South Korea. It's been going on for 15 seasons. Germany has an SNL offshoot that's been going for five seasons. Egypt and Italy have one that's been rubbed in for four seasons.
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Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Maybe the funniest attempt though came from France where it only lasted one episode a single episode aired and guess what they called it? Lay Saturday Night Live, which sounds like exactly what the real SNL would call it if they had a French parody version SNL pop up. So clearly this is something that has been on Lauren's mind.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
He's like, why don't we just take this approach and apply it to other countries? But I just wonder if the different comedy cultures are going to accept, you know, a sketch comedy show like America has. So I am curious, though. I do want to see it in because the British version of The Office is maybe funnier than the American version. So they've got their comedy chops for sure.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
But I always second guess myself. Like, did I report that thing from last year? What even is a 1099-K?
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Head to TaxAct.com and file before April 15th.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
You are right. This affects pretty much everything. I'm just going to go down the list of all the industries, all the bargaining chips that these two countries have on the table. First up is Hollywood, actually. China is letting fewer U.S. films into their market. Hollywood's share of the Chinese market has dropped from 9% to 5%, so that is one thing.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
One of our big exports from America is entertainment, so... China is saying that we're not going to let as many films into our domestic box office. Obviously, Apple is just getting wrecked by this whole thing. We've talked about how these tariffs could tack on $350 to the price of the next iPhone. The bike industry and the e-bike industry is super exposed as well.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Tariffs could spike prices on those input costs up to 50% because a lot of bike parts are made over in China. And then clothes is a pretty obvious one. Tariffs is over 60 percent on clothes from China means that back to school spending and just your Zara hauls are going to get more expensive car prices. Another one. I mean, I could literally keep going down the list.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
But the reason why these two countries divorcing, as you put it, is so big. It's just how many specific industries are going to have to reckon with a new like price calculus to deal with.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Then inflation actually eased up last month, but there's a major speed bump. Tariffs still looming. It's Friday, April 11th. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
and some reporters went over to China and started talking to vendors over there. One specific industry that is massively impacted by this is actually the plastic Christmas tree industry and the Christmas ornament industry because 85% of Christmas decorations that come into the US do come in from China.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
And it was actually like relatively sad to listen to these reporters speaking to these factory owners saying we have zero orders coming in with no one has ordered anything. So it's not it's not trickling to a stop. It is like basically fully stopping right now because hundreds. plus tariffs are basically trade embargoes.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Like there's no one who can, you know, no one's business can really survive margins that just get absolutely gobbled up by these trade barriers. So I think you are seeing basically a trade freeze, at least for now, obviously things change. We've talked about bargaining chips, this and that.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
So there is maybe some thawing that will be to come, but right now it is just totally frozen the relationship between these two countries.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Inflation figures are in and they're looking like the migration patterns of Arctic turns heading south before the summer. Consumer prices eased downwards month over month for the first time in nearly five years. The CPI fell 0.1% in March. Woo! Year-over-year inflation also dropped to 2.4%, below the 2.6% economists were expecting.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
If you're looking for the MVP of falling prices, look no further than your local Chevron station. Gas prices dropped steeply last month due to supply cuts from OPEC and pulled the whole index down with them. But even the so-called core inflation measure economists watch that excludes volatile energy prices came in below forecast and notched its smallest increase since March 2021.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
But also like the migration patterns of the Arctic turns, prices likely aren't going to stay south for long. Economists warn that new tariffs could juice inflation in the coming months, even with the pause Trump announced late on Wednesday.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Based on how stocks traded yesterday, with all three major indexes finishing deep in the red, it's a sign investors are still nervy when it comes to how tariffs might weigh on inflation progress. So Neil, a good report, but maybe a little backwards looking.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
But still, that 0.1% drop that I celebrated came from somewhere, and I mentioned gas prices, but a lot of the downward price pressure looked like it came from travel-related things. Gas at a 6.3% month-over-month drop. There was a 5.3% decline in airline fares. hotel prices also fell sharply last month.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
So the vibes that I were getting from this report is that a lot of people are choosing to do staycations, maybe postponing that travel because of the uncertainty on the horizon. So One final thing that we should add to this whole inflation cocktail is that government data continues to come in very solid. Employers added 228,000 jobs a month. We just saw inflation tick downward. So you are right.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
If absent of this trade war, everything looks like it's heading in the correct direction. But obviously, there's just that massive question mark, that massive uncertainty that this trade war does.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
I mean, if anyone could do it, it is Prada because Prada has just cracked the code in recent times. Most of their success, and it has been a very good success because they are going in one direction while the rest of the luxury market looks to be going in the other direction. And you can attribute it to some of its sub-brands like Miu Miu is just massive right now.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
It is my airs tour, and I'm not too proud to admit that I did put in some time to try and learn Bella's Lullaby on the piano growing up. It ended up being a little above my pay grade, but also this announcement got me thinking about other movies I'd like to go on tour for their soundtracks.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Retail sales of that brand grew 93% last year, so that is clearly bucking this overall trend of luxury spending slowing down. That being said, though, Prada has tried to do this before. Back right around the turn of the century, they were trying to become an Italian fashion house. They bought brands Jill Sanders, Helmut Lang,
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
that they thought they could share their approach to it and just bring kind of their winning alchemy to it. That did not work whatsoever. They sold Lange in 2005. They divested from Sander the following year. So this is not necessarily an easy thing to do. You can't just say, oh, let's just apply the same approach to the Prada brand and the Miu Miu brand to these other brands like Versace.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
So good luck, Prada. If anyone can do it, it's you. But you haven't done it very well in the past.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
You won't be wearing, but you will be watching.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
All right, let's take a quick break. Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week is up next.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
Let's face it, if you're listening to a podcast, you have five minutes to spare.
Morning Brew Daily
Can Cooling Inflation Withstand Tariffs? & Prada Buys Versace for $1.4B
On Public, you can build a multi-asset investment portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto, and more.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
His financial statements, they made 1.9 million dollars in revenue last quarter. So there is a war going on in the quantum computing space. I know you don't want to explain it again, but just as a refresher, these computers can hold ones and zeros. ...at the same time and can process information at a much faster rate than the world's existing supercomputers right now.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
So some people think that they have the potential to unlock a whole new type of computing that can solve the world's toughest challenges.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Right, and the housing market is a little stuck right now. This actually dates back to 1980 with a technological innovation up there with Newton's third law. And that's when Toto introduced its first generation of washlet bidet seats. They figured out the golden angle, which will go down in mathematics history, the golden angle for a water spout to shoot up and clean everything there.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
It's like that helpful know-it-all who always seems to know the latest news or alpha on a stock.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
That golden angle is 43 degrees. Keep that in your mind. It's going to be in your history textbook. So once they figured that out, they started growing and right now two thirds of their revenue is in Japan, but 10% is in the United States. And as you mentioned, there was a lot of word of mouth during COVID. A lot of people were remodeling then.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
I think there is a, toilets just have not had any innovation throughout the 20th or 21st century outside of Japan where more people have smart toilets than they do online. Ich denke, mehr Leute besuchen Japan. Sie kommen nach Hause und sagen, wow, japanische Toiletten sind unglaublich. Sie sind nichts, wie wir sie haben. Ich will einen davon. Ich will eine Showpiece in meinem Bad.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Ich will nachts gehen und nicht die Lichter aufmachen, weil es für mich eine wunderschöne, gelegene Throne gibt. I do see these catching on. I think as more people remodel their houses, if the housing market gets going again, why would someone opt for a 20th century old toilet when they could have this new snazzy gadget? How much would you pay for a toilet, hypothetically?
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Would you go into that $2,000, $3,000 range? I've just rented apartments for the past forever. They've all come with toilets. I've never had to buy my own toilet. I don't even know where I would price that as. I guess I would... Need to go for a test drive and if I like the feel, then I would probably pay up for that. Something you use a lot.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
It's literally called Alpha and can answer questions about any stock. Want some insight as to who might benefit from increased interest in modular nuclear power plants? Ask Alpha.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final non-toilet-related headlines. All you ski bums listening to this, rejoice. The patrollers at Park City Mountain Resort have ended their nearly two-week disruptive strike against Vale Resorts, claiming victory over their employer. They said Vale, which owns Park City Mountain and 32 other ski resorts, Untertitelung des ZDF, 2020
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
It can help you tease out your hunches and navigate all the stocks, crypto, options and bonds available to trade on Public's platform.
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CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
So, I don't Ich verstehe die Technologie behind this, but they're looking at the numbers in Florida and they're saying, wow, Florida is hockey country. We want to make a statement, so they're going there. Here's something fun to end the week with.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
At the beginning of each year, the English nerds at Lake Superior State University release a list of banished words to highlight vocab that has become quote overused, misused or simply unnecessary. In other words, cringe. Aber ich soll das nicht sagen, weil Cringe auf dieser Jahresliste von verblasenen Worten steht.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Wenn du die Leute bei Lake Superior State humorieren möchtest, dann sprichst du auch von Standard-Events als eine Ära. Vergesst nicht, sorry, not sorry zu sagen, wenn du nicht sorry bist. Und stopp die Punktuierung nachdem du einen emphatischen Punkt gemacht hast.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
What you did there was include all of the banished words in one sentence. I'll just go down the line in case people missed that in that eloquent bars you just spit. Wenn du weißt, weißt du, IYKYK ist das Text-Shorthand, das Leute benutzen.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Game Changer, 100% verwendet, anstatt Skibidi zu benutzen, was ich noch nicht weiß, was das bedeutet, und gedroppt, wie in der Liste von Bannished-Wörtern aus dem Jahr 2025, einfach gedroppt. Sind da irgendwelche Wörter, die wir vielleicht noch benutzen sollten und nicht total cringe sind?
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Have a great Friday and an even better weekend. For any questions, comments or feedback, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com. Es gab keinen Podcast-Sharing in den letzten zwei Tagen, als du dabei warst, Tobi. Die Leute brauchen deinen Wunsch. Wer soll unseren Zuhörern über dieses Wochenende von Morning Brew Daily erzählen?
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Wildfires continued to rage across Los Angeles for a third day yesterday in what the fire department chief called one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of the city. Neighborhoods obliterated, at least 10 people have died, more than 35,000 acres burned, an area twice the size of Manhattan.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Liu is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Uchenawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Menino is on audio. Hair and Make-up, if you know, you know. Devin Emery is our chief content officer. And our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Die beiden größten Blasen, der Eton-Fahrzeug nahe Altadena und der Palisades-Fahrzeug, der die Palisaden des Pazifikus verletzt hat, sind bis heute noch nie vorhanden. Mehr als 360.000 Menschen sind unter mandatorischen Evakuierungsordnungen.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Selbst mit dem Feuer noch anzuerkennen, hat die Aufmerksamkeit gestern zu den Kosten des Schadens gewechselt, was erwartet zu sein, dass es astronomisch und fast unvorhergesehen ist, je nach dem Wert der Häuser und Strukturen, die in Flammen geflogen sind. J.P. Morgan hat die totalen ökonomischen Löhne auf 50 Billionen Dollar gesteigert. Tobi, this insurance mess.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, is this the beginning of the end for fire insurance in California?
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Just went from already really bad to worse.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
So why did State Farm, Allstate, etc. pull out of California? Well, they just said that the prices that they could offer did not reflect the risk that they were taking on. They were saying, we're not a charity, we can't offer below market prices, especially when these things happen. And we have to pay out because our business just won't support that.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
California premiums for fire insurance are actually quite low. And that is because they've had regulations on the books for decades that cap premium price hikes to 7%. So they saw this wave of defections from insurers after the 2017-2018 campfire and other series of fires that began in Northern California.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Und dann gesehen, dass all diese Verletzungen, Kalifornien hat tatsächlich zwei Wochen vorher entschieden, neue Regulierungen zu implementieren, die diese Insureds mit höheren Prämien ermöglichen. Alle Staaten sagten, dass es ihre massiven Verletzungen stoppen würde, ihre massiven Verlängerungen, weil dieser neuen Regulierung.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Nun, alle Staaten sagten, dass es in diesem Staat bleiben würde, es würde Prämien von 34% erhöhen. Also Kalifornien versucht, New laws, new regulations to stem the exodus of insurers. But it seems like this new fire just reversed all of that progress.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Tobi is so back. We are very glad you are feeling better and in mostly full voice. This return is conspicuously well timed for a Friday too. Tobi, what did you even do? You said you didn't leave your apartment for 54 straight hours.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
und haben viel größere Auswirkungen auf die breitere Wirtschaft. herr easily known to catch on fire especially in these times of climate change between 1990 and 2010 25 million people moved into that wildland urban interface the wui 12.7 million homes were built so this is Proving to be a big predicament. Meanwhile, what's going on with the weather and with the fires today?
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CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
National Weather Service said it's going to be another bad day today. Critical red flag fire weather conditions. The Palisades fire is 6% contained. The Eden fire is 0% contained. So I guess when we come back on this pod on Monday, we're hoping for better news.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Ja. Let's look at just one of those cases, the Pentagon Papers. The Nixon administration tried to stop the press, New York Times and the Washington Post, from releasing the Pentagon Papers, which was the secret history of the Vietnam War. They said this could scuttle peace talks, this would be bad for national security and compromise our intelligence agencies.
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CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
The Supreme Court came down on the side of free speech there. Most recently in 2010, they came down on the side of the government. So there has been some split decisions here. Hier in the past, we'll see what they go with on this TikTok issue.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
January 19th. It's not just like TikTok is going to go away, but Apple and Google will have to stop offering it on their app stores and other tech providers in the US will have to stop hosting it and it won't be able to send updates to users. So it will die a slow death essentially.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, the segment where Toby and I pick one stock that has kept dry January so far and another that was less disciplined. Except this week has not really been one to brag about for markets, so I'm sorry to say that we have selected two dogs for you today. Hey, you gotta take what you're given.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Toby, you won the pre-show bridge contest, so you get to go first. Let's go on my training.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
No, and we called this a dog of the week because rising bond yields such as this is not a good sign. It's a sign that investors think that there's going to be a lot of inflation. Coming up and that is not great for the overall economy. It's going to mean that the Federal Reserve will have to keep rates high.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
They penciled in two rate cuts this year, which was lower than the four that they penciled in even a few months ago. Das ist ein Signal, dass die Inflation hier sein wird. Oder zumindest die Investoren erwarten das. Und das ist der Grund, warum sie den 10-Jährigen-Wert höher schicken.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Es ist auch nicht gut für Stocks, wir sollten sagen, weil wenn diese Werte so hoch werden, wenn man sich etwas wie 4 oder 5 Prozent Werte anschaut, wird das mehr attraktiv. Dann der Stockmarkt. Also, Trader pilen in Bonds, wenn das passiert, und Stocks nehmen es runter. Das geschah im Oktober 2023.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
You know that Es ist eine Reputation, die das komplizierteste Karten-Spiel auf der Erde ist. Ich weiß nicht, was du denkst. Was machst du, um in dieses Spiel zu kommen?
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CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
Es gab einen wirklich großen Markt-Sell-Off, als 10-Jahre-Bond-Erhöhungen um 5% angekommen sind, was sie gerade machen. Also, wir werden sehen, was im Stockmarkt passiert. Aber es ist im Allgemeinen ein bisschen spukig, was im Bond-Markt passiert.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
My Dog of the Week is quantum computing stocks, whose breathtaking rally hit the skids, and all it took was a few dozen words by NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Huang. Huang, speaking with Wall Street analysts on Tuesday, said quantum computers that could do anything useful were still 15 to 30 years out, and given his prominence at the heart of bleeding-edge technology, investors took his words as the law.
Morning Brew Daily
CA Home Insurance in Full Crisis & TikTok’s Last Pitch to Supreme Court
They dumped quantum stocks like a toxic boyfriend, sending companies like Rigetti Computing Das war's für heute. Bis zum nächsten Mal. Ich meine, ich bin einfach so froh, dass du nicht...
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Terms and more at applecard.com. Neil, you know that one friend who holds the group together? Like when you're on a trip abroad, they've checked the weather, done the research, and know the currency conversion. Without them, we'd be lost, literally and figuratively. And here's the good news.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Wise helps you manage your business's finances in 40-plus currencies, all with no hidden fees, no markups on the exchange rate, and no ongoing subscription costs. It's fast, too. Sounds like a business's best friend. To learn more about how you can use Wise Business to save time, money, and stress, visit wise.com slash business. That's wise.com slash business.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
First of all, everyone who bet on the Pope yesterday was totally wrong. Prevost was at 0.3% on Polymarket right before the announcement. So whoever backed an American Pope made a pretty penny. But yesterday was an all-time day on the internet. I'm just going to run through some of the best jokes I saw. First, a Chicago Pope. Rome will finally have some good pizza.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Shark Ninja is kind of crushing it, and they are running the Dyson playbook here. If that sounded like a lot of products that Dyson makes, you are correct. Shark Ninja started with vacuums and blenders, and then Dyson started with vacuums. Then they expanded into hair care.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
I am especially bullish if you are Shark Ninja on this electric styling iron because the Dyson airbrush has become the de facto way that you get ready with. And it is. I've seen it in action. It is a remarkable piece of machinery. So the fact that Shark Ninja has identified this as well definitely looks like it's a growth opportunity.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
And then I will say that Shark Ninja is pretty well insulated from tariffs as well. They said that they've had this pretty multi-pronged approach to where they're sourcing their materials from. And so they think that... They will have virtually no exposure to China by the end of the fiscal year. Most companies say that maybe two, three, five years down the line, they can move out of China.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
They have seen the writing on the wall here and have diversified their supplier base, their manufacturing base to really remove a dependency on China, which is another reason why I think the market is especially bullish on this Massachusetts-based company.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
My dog of the week is Krispy Kreme, who reported earnings yesterday that were neither hot nor ready, is reassessing its big rollout with McDonald's and pulled its full year guidance due to economic conditions softer than a dozen fresh donuts. Krispy Kreme's big partnership with the Golden Arches was supposed to be a big national opportunity.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
But after rolling out to 2,400 of McDonald's 13,500 domestic locations, the companies hit pause to reassess. We are shocked by the speed at which the story fell apart, Truist analyst Bill Chappell wrote in a note. Especially since a year ago, Krispy Kreme announced their donuts would be sold in all McDonald's US locations by the end of 2026.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
While initially promising customers didn't bite on the prospect of pairing their quarter pounder, with even more calories and sales have fallen below projections. Krispy Kreme had also been quickly expanding their capacity in order to serve McDonald's sprawling restaurant footprint, which weighed on the company's overall profits. So now, Neil, Krispy Kreme is a shell of its former self.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Its stock fell 24% yesterday and is now down 70% over the last year.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Followed by a lot of jokes about Chicago Deep Dish being the new body of Christ. Then lots of tariff content. The tariffs worked. We're even making popes in America now. And then finally, lots of Chicago sports jokes. Prevost is a Chicago White Sox fan.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Yeah, and they also had a big cybersecurity instance back in November too, which hurt its online ordering systems. Online makes up 15.5% of the company's donut shop sales. So it is a rather digital first company as well, which you wouldn't really expect from Krispy Kreme. So yeah, the hits just keep coming, which is tough because they're good donuts. I mean, come on, the product is there.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
So good luck, Krispy Kreme. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. New Zealand has long been home to more sheep than humans, but like the Matrix, humans are staging a comeback. According to latest government figures, there are just four and a half sheep for every one person on the Ovine-dominated island. That is down from a ratio of 22 to 1 back in 1982.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
While nearly five sheep to a man is still a lot of sheep, a shifting agricultural landscape has led to a drop-off in the amount of woolly creatures roaming New Zealand's green fields.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Back in the 80s, farming sheep for wool and meat was the nation's primary economic driver, but the rise of synthetic fibers has kneecapped the industry, leading many farmers to remake their fields to pursue dairy farming or pine forestry in order to sell carbon offsets, which both make more money. Neil, New Zealand has always been the butt of a
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Make them now because humans are staging that comeback.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
The Chicago Sun-Times found a picture of him back at the 2005 World Series, which means a fan in the stands became the pope before the White Sox made it back to the World Series. Also, Chicago produced a pope. before a QB who is throwing for over 4,000 yards. So American Pope, really, really great for lots of good jokes. And now a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, you know what I love?
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Yeah, the Cosmos 482 is only about a meter wide, but weighs 1,190 pounds. So it is short, but it is stout. And modeling suggests that it'll hit the ground at around 150 miles an hour, which honestly doesn't sound crazy fast to me because right now it's currently traveling at... You should try it.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
That's not going to feel good if that hits you, but it is not expected to break up into that big meteor-esque shower that happens when objects typically burn up in the Earth's atmosphere because it was designed to re-enter in one piece. You've got to be really, really unlucky if the one meter wide object first of all hits land in general, not in the ocean, and second of all, if it
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
somehow found its way into someone's personal property, that would just be deeply, deeply unlucky.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Yeah, it's got to hit somewhere.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Iconic combos. And I'm going to add one more to the list, Planet Oat and breakfast.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
It's rich, creamy, and smooth enough to go toe-to-toe with any fancy cafe creation, but it's right in your fridge.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Or unsweetened if you want zero sugar without giving up that velvety texture.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Or as I like to think of it, the Toby and Neil of breakfast. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit PlanetOat.com for more. Like ice cubes in the summer, some trade tensions with key U.S. partners are beginning to melt.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
President Trump announced a still-to-be-finalized trade agreement with Britain yesterday that lowers tariffs on British steel, aluminum, and cars in exchange for the U.K. buying more U.S. goods like beef, ethanol, and aircrafts. The blanket 10% tariff that Trump applied to all US trade partners will remain in place.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
While details are still murky, we know that the UK got the green light to ship 100,000 cars to the US at a 10% rate, down from an original 27.5%. That's a win for luxury brands like Range Rover and Aston Martin, who now have a slightly smoother road into American garages. Rolls-Royce engines and planes will also fly into the US tariff-free,
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
and an unnamed UK airline just agreed to buy $10 billion worth of Boeing aircrafts. This deal framework is probably not going to make a major impact on trade figures, though. The US imported just 96,000 UK-made vehicles last year, compared to 3 million from Mexico, our number one auto supplier.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
And Britain was only the United States' ninth biggest trading partner last year, behind Vietnam and ahead of India, while trade in the first quarter totaled just 2.9%, of all U.S. imports and exports. As for the rest of Europe, the European Union unveiled a plan to pressure the U.S. into trade talks by proposing tariffs on $107 billion worth of American goods and launching a WTO dispute.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
It might already be working. Trump said yesterday that we intend to make a deal with Europe soon. As for China, top U.S. and Chinese trade officials are set to meet this weekend in Switzerland to work on de-escalating their trade war, even though a deal remains unlikely for now. So trade talks, Neil, they are happening.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
And maybe why you saw stocks react so positively, even though that the deal was relatively small, it did signal that Trump is very willing to, you know, get over these trade conflicts and make a deal. The anecdote that kind of showed that was that Trump called Keir Starmer late on Wednesday to finalize the detail.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
The prime minister was actually watching the Arsenal Champions League game and took the call. Arsenal ended up losing, by the way. Starmer said that they hadn't planned to announce a trade deal on Thursday. So this was definitely kind of a last minute thing, but it shows that Trump is open to negotiating.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
And maybe this is more of a deal, a win for Britain than anything else, given lots of post-Brexit governments have been chasing a broader trade deal with the United States. This agreement falls short of that deal, but it is kind of the first deal that they've been waiting for for many years.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
But Ryan Peterson from the logistics company Flexport tweeted out, as one of the only countries with a trade surplus with the United States, the UK was still only able to negotiate a 10% tariff rate. That does not bode well for the rest of the world. So that's one interpretation of this deal.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Then Trump announced a framework for a trade deal with the UK. We're sending them Guy Fieri and we're getting back David Beckham. It's Friday, May 9th. Let's ride.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
I mean, he already has made a gigantic impact. This pledge probably puts him into the largest philanthropic gifts ever, far bigger than John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, even when you adjust for inflation. Only Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett could potentially nip him at the end because he has a larger fortune than Bill Gates does right now.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
But yeah, if you go through Bill Gates' history, $100 billion since its founding. By the way, speaking of Warren Buffett, 41% of the foundation's money so far has come from Warren Buffett. So they have kind of been the number one and number two biggest philanthropic donors over the last quarter century right now. And now Gates just says, I want to accelerate the timeline.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
This has been my second calling, my second career. I want to make this impact while I'm still alive here, which is why you saw this pledge basically just speed up the timetable for his giving.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
AI usage has reached a new frontier after a family used the tech to resurrect their dead brother to give an impact statement during a trial. In an Arizona courtroom this week, an uncanny representation of Christopher Pelkey, who died from a gunshot wound four years ago, played in front of a courtroom of his now-convicted killer's trial.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
The video was created by Pelkey's sister, who set off on a mission to humanize her brother using the technology. She collected a total of 48 victim impact statements and relied on her husband and friend to cobble together the simulation using a variety of different AI tools. In another life, we probably could have been friends, the video version of Pelkey said.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Towards the end of the hearing, the judge said, I loved that AI. Thank you for that. Experts say that this is likely the first time in the U.S. that an AI-generated rendering of a deceased victim has been used to deliver an impact statement. But it's far from the only attempt companies are making to bring people back from the dead.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Case in point, BBC Maestro, a service kind of like Masterclass, launched a writing course last week taught by an AI version of the mystery writer Agatha Christie in cooperation with her estate trained on her writing and interviews. Neil, the courtroom resurrection was well-received, and both Christie and Pelkey were resurrected by members of their families.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
But still, creating digital clones of dead relatives is always going to be a controversial capability of AI, but one that companies are increasingly exploring.
Morning Brew Daily
US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
And digital ghosts in general are certainly a thing that are coming down the pipeline. Companies are trying to train algorithms on people's digital data to seize people's digital data so they can offer comfort for friends or family. They think that these ghosts can give people a sense of agency when it comes to confronting deaths.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
But then you go on the downsides and the risks, which are numerous as well, because one, they a lot of data privacy laws are probably not well equipped to deal with companies that are mining through a dead person's data and then recreating a simulation of them, but then also healthy grieving.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Experts are saying that you're disrupting the grieving process by giving people access to their loved ones once they have a pass. So digital ghosts are certainly a controversial sector of the market, not even when you consider the fact that they could be introduced to legal proceedings as well.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
Up next, let's talk about Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity. And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3% daily cash back on my everyday purchases.
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US-UK Reach Major Trade Deal & Bill Gates Giving Away $200B By 2045
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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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Canada Pulls US Liquor From Shelves & Can Fries Save Sweetgreen?
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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?
Morning Brew Daily
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.
Morning Brew Daily
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.
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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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Interest is compounded daily, helping you grow your money fast. Plus, as a division of MidFirst Bank, it's FDIC-insured up to $250,000, and there are no monthly fees.
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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
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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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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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Yeah, just look at the inroads they've made with people who do have more sophisticated financial needs. According to their investor day, 45% of recent users earn six figures or more. People who are at least 44 years old now make up a quarter of recent users. And about 60% of recent users are married or living with a partner. So it's not surprising those kids in the basement.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
It's not the people who maybe propelled the meme stock mania of COVID of 2020. It is just normal people with normal and increasingly more sophisticated financial needs. So you can see kind of that Robin Hood saying, we're in the next phase of reiteration and we want to go bigger here.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
I mean, it's not sports betting as you traditionally think about. It is they're trying to create these markets. Essentially prediction markets. Yeah, prediction markets, which they rolled out ahead of the presidential election. So that was, I think, a test run for them. So they're thinking like, hey, this is clearly something where people are interested in.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Then why Guinness is suddenly the hottest drink in America this holiday season. It's Friday, December 6th. Let's ride. Let's ride.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Why would we not skate where the puck is going? So I do think that there's nothing planned on the books right now, but they're definitely looking down that path.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
It's actually a very nice snapshot of the year in news, news, politics, science. If you go down the list, it does show what people were talking about. So I like this.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
top i don't know i mean hayley welsh is absolutely speed running the internet at this point she got the viral video she launched the podcast of course the next thing to do is launch a meme coin but it does speak to kind of the current iteration of the crypto market that we're in right now i mean you go back we had the nft craze now we're in the meme coin craze dogecoin which is the original meme coin if that's what you want to call it uh named after the shiba inu meme that a lot of people know
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
It's outperformed Bitcoin over the last month. I mean, we were just talking about the Department of Government Efficiency is literally called a dough. So clearly, memes are driving culture right now. And just to be clear for everyone listening, the point of these coins is that they don't have a point. There is no business model. There is no cash flow.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Yeah, talking about wrongly. Let's revisit this in 2025. Now a word from our sponsor, Yahoo Finance. Neil, was it a fast week or a slow week for you this week? Slow week for sure. Coming back from a break is always tough. Agreed, a slow week for me too, but fast week when it comes to the market once again. That is something I found. The market waits for no man.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
There's no underlying asset that you're buying. You are truly just buying into the fact that there's a shared understanding of an inside joke on the internet. So whether you think that has real value or not, clearly it does based off of the market valuations of these meme coins. But these are these highly volatile tokens.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
They're not something that your finance 101 professor ever talked about, but they're clearly hot right now.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
That's probably the easiest one for people to wrap their heads around. Mudang is just a meme. Like you saw her go viral on social media. Now there's a coin that is tied to her value. It is worth a lot of money, but that is probably the easiest one to kind of wrap your head around.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Yeah, Chill Guy, hands in pockets, going viral on TikTok, going viral on X. It has reached a market cap of $466 million. Peanut has hit $1.2 billion. There is a lot of money pouring into these things, unfortunately.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Dogecoin is worth $60 billion. It's worth more than Target right now. So it depends on the enduring character of the meme.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
I think that. But investor beware, absolutely. Investor beware. Now let's sprint to the finish of the week with some headlines you should know. Up first, the net appears to be closing around the shooter who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City earlier this week.
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Police released images of a suspected gunman taken from a surveillance camera at an Upper West Side hostel on 103rd Street. Authorities obtained a search warrant for the building and are working to identify him. Other loose ends investigators have tracked down. They believe the suspect may have caught a ride from Atlanta to New York last month on a bus.
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They also found a water bottle and a protein bar wrapper in a nearby trash can that authorities say the gunman purchased from Starbucks just before the shooting. Despite all the leads though, Neil, he still remains at large.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
There are constantly new stories to be read and data to parse through. It's a runaway train that you can lose track of pretty quickly.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Evocative and soft, warming and rich, appealing to a desire for comfort. That is not a script for a sensual phone line operator. Those are just some of the ways that Pantone is describing its color of the year for 2025. The color curator named Mocha Moose, a mellow brown infused with a sensorial and comforting warmth. as the color it thinks will define the next 12 months.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Neil, this past year's color was a warm and fruity peach fuzz, so a shift to a nougaty brown that evokes everything from luxury knitwear to swamp water is quite the 180.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
It is a good question. It's both predictive because they are predicting the color of the year and prescriptive because they are almost speaking it into existence. But I don't know. If you go back through the history, I think we're coming off of peach fuzz and Viva Magenta to have a brown. Maybe it is just time to settle down a little bit and have a little bit more of a mellow color of the year.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Real-time market data, research reports, stock screeners, news updates you can trust. Yahoo Finance speeds you up so you can stay ahead of the curve.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Yeah, I don't think I have a shot for this one, Neil. Obviously, the first thing your mind goes through, though, is who would be a good Dolly. Some names that come to mind, at least vocally speaking, Miley Cyrus. Her version of Jolene might be even better than Dolly's. Sabrina Carpenter could be good as well. But also, this is the way that they're going about this.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Opens up the world to a lot of undiscovered talent. So I do think they're also looking for performers of all ages of Dolly's life. So I think we're going to see some really cool videos emerge. I don't know, maybe your grandmother all the way down to your young daughter might be nailing their Dolly impression. I don't know.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
I wish I had a chance at this, but I don't think I got the pipes for it, Neil.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
I mean, on the Dolly Parton kick. I want you to share the podcast with someone you think has a shot at playing Dolly. Young, old, blonde, not blonde. If you think they have what it takes, send them this episode.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Still, there is a ton of energy behind Doge in Washington since pretty much everyone can agree that the federal government could use some pruning. And I mean everyone. Some Democrats and progressives have shown an eagerness to engage with Musk and Ramaswamy, including Bernie Sanders, who said this week that Musk is right about proposed cuts to military spending. Neil, can Doge make a dent?
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
And that's the math aspect of it. Just do a thought experiment real quick. Say we fired a bunch of DMV workers. People are still going to need their driver's license. They still need to register their vehicles. And yet now you're going to go into a DMV that has less workers there. They're handling two, three, four, five people. Does that actually make the government more efficient?
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
And then the other aspect of government waste that they want to go after Doge does is fraudulent payments, which, again, is understandable. You don't want money going towards fraud. You don't want it being misappropriated.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
And yet, if you think about the way you push back against fraud is usually to add in more layers of maybe bureaucracy, more paperwork, more hoops to jump through to ensure that the money is going to places you want it to go. And again, that doesn't really achieve your goal of efficiency as well. So they almost... have an impossible task in front of them. It's a catch-22.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Whenever you go after trying to cut places, unless you make cuts in precisely the right ways, it might lead to inefficiencies.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
I do think that the main takeaway here is one, the task is gargantuan. It will be difficult. But on the other hand, Lawmakers are willing to play ball. Senator Susan Collins, who actually leads the Appropriations Committee, did have a hour-long one-on-one meeting with Elon Musk. He didn't make a presentation. They were just chatting through ideas. But clearly there is some momentum here.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Whether they can pull it off, that remains to be seen.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
For this next story, we're going to do a little role-playing exercise. If you are at a holiday happy hour and a young person walks up to you and hands you a Guinness, do you A, politely decline, B, take a small sip, or C, tactically chug it so that the line marking the barrier between the dark stout and the creamy foam on top lands between the G and the harp logo on the outside of the glass?
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Good job, everyone. The correct answer is C. Splitting the G, as it's called, has found its way into online culture, propelling Guinness out of old Irish pubs filled with old Irish men and into the glasses and gullets of younger Americans. One Boston pub owner told the New York Times that they had to purchase 63% more Guinness this year to keep up with skyrocketing demand.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Some reasons why the drink might be having a moment outside the popularity of splitting the G. Guinness is best enjoyed straight from the tap. So a return to more social drinking after the pandemic could be providing a boost. Also from Paul Mescal on the big screen to Sally Rooney on bookshelves. Irish culture in general is just in right now.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Neil, these tailwinds Guinness is experiencing means that the biggest issue it's facing ahead of the holiday season is will there be enough of it?
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
I do think it is fascinating all the different aspects that have thrusted Guinness into kind of being the leader, really, in a semi-dying category. Another one is that Guinness has been working very hard to shed its reputation as a heavy beer. I mean, anyone who's seen a pint of Guinness, it looks like a meal in a glass. It is so heavy. The foam on top seems so thick.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
But really, they've been on this marketing campaign to show that we're actually not that heavy of a beer. It's 4.2% alcohol by volume. That's about the same strength as a Bud Light. There's only 125 calories per a 12-ounce glass. That's the same as Modelo Especial. So despite what looks would show, it's not as heavy as people think.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
as the beer industry kind of shifts away from these heavier craft beers, people are saying, wait a second, Guinness, despite what it looks like, is a much lighter beverage.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
as in the freaky guy from Saltburn, as in Sabrina Carpenter's now ex-boyfriend. Then there's Koi Kerhunche, which is a Dutch breed of dog that Shohei Otani owns, so people are looking that up. Buttigieg, as in Pete Buttigieg. Cheyenne, the fast fashion company. Then Speck You Lost 3B, a new exoplanet that was discovered this year. There's Frigie, which was the Olympics mascot.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Well, there's a little bit of controversy actually as to what the target is when you're splitting the G. I The way I've done it is between the bottom of the G and the Harp logo, but some people try to split the actual middle of the G itself. So depending on which pub you're in, depending on if you're in Ireland or America, there is a little bit of controversy.
Morning Brew Daily
DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
But there is this rise in so-called ginfluencers. That's a real term that's been flying around on social media where this – this tradition, whatever you want to call it, started way back, like 2015 era, 2017 era, in Ireland, in the UK, and it has slowly made its way across the pond. You had never heard of it before this show. I don't know what that says.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
They pretty much did it because there was so much support from, really, French's elite class to get this thing back up because it is just a symbol of national pride.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
In the days and even the hours after the fire, you saw these almost like one-upmanship coming in from a lot of these billionaires where the richest families in France, like I'm talking about the Caring family, they said that they would, from luxury, good fame, would give $113 million. Then LVMH's CEO, Bernard Arnault, pledged $226 million. The L'Oreal Foundation gave $226 million.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
So it really became this big game of like, we want to get this back on board, but it was also almost like this public display of who can support it the most. And then, yeah, Macron played a big role as well. He said five years, we're going to open it.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
He put this very hard deadline with the sheer amount of the work they had to do, but they came in under... It's wild that they came in under budget when you consider... just how much went into restoring this building.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
Semiglutide, as in Ozempic, as in Nova Nordis. Zendaya and Chapel Roan.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
And I can't help but contrast Notre Dame reopening with the vote of no confidence as the French government just went through where Parliament is still trying to figure out how to run the country. And then Macron is definitely going to use this reopening as a chance to kind of bolster his political standing because he's on unstable footing right now.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
So that is another undertone to this great victory for France. But still, they have some things going on behind the scenes that they have to figure out. Up next, it's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time. Welcome to Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week, where we pick one stock from the week's news that knows there are still 25 days left in the year and is making use of each and every one of them.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
And one stock who is already looking ahead to 2025 whilst forgetting the gift that is the present. Neil, I won the pre-show grammar competition. You did good, but I did well. So I'm up first. And my stock of the week is Robinhood. The brokerage firm has quietly been staging a nice comeback over the past weeks, months, and year to climb back over its IPO price. It's now up 217% year-to-date.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
It's worth about $35 billion and just hosted its first Investor Day event this past Wednesday. CEO Vlad Tenev laid out a future where Robinhood has its hands in everything from stock and crypto trading to maybe sports betting. One interesting tidbit from the investor day was that Robinhood sees desktops as a pillar of growth over the next few years, as the Wall Street Journal put it.
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DOGE Pitches $2T Budget Cuts & Everyone is Drinking Guinness
According to the company, about 50% of overall retail trading takes place away from mobile devices, but only makes up about 10% of Robinhood's volume. It's an interesting strategy Robinhood first caught on for offering zero-fee trading, attracting a more casual crowd of investors to its app. But now, Neil, it's looking to go deeper with more serious, more sophisticated traders.
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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.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
That Netflix just had its biggest TV debut of all time, and it had nothing to do with the NFL. It's Friday, January 3rd. Let's ride.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Neil, there was fear that the three-year delay between seasons might dull this series' appeal, which pits contestants against each other in childish games with life or death implications. But clearly, that has not been the case here.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Okay, here's what I want to hear from you guys. Tell us if Toby's in and out are in or out, and then tell us if Neil's in and out are in and out. That might be a little confusing, but give us some feedback here.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
It's very meme-able. But also, you have to remember the first Squid Games came out of nowhere, like you described, during the pandemic, where it did feel like everything was up to the max. There was a lot of economic hardship at the time, so it just really resonated then. I think there is a lot of those same feelings even three years later.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
One thing I thought was interesting is that the show's creator... actually created the show because he was feeling similar things. He was down to his last dollar. He created the show about people down to their last dollar who will do desperate things. And Netflix pretty much entirely footed the bill of the first season because they were taking a big risk on this basically no-name writer.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
So because Netflix paid for the season up front, a lot of the actors weren't actually immediately compensated in kind of accordance to how big the show got. So the writer did want to create more seasons. He left season one on a cliffhanger in order to give some of the actors, some of the people involved in the show, a bigger chance to participate in financial windfall going forward.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
So I thought that was interesting that the writer felt motivated to write more episodes. And so these people who made the show what it is could reap the benefits financially.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
I've had it recently, and I don't wish it on my worst enemy. I had it over the winter break. My girlfriend did as well. It was tough. Also, you factor in the questionable fae on a cruise ship, the choppy seas as well, the fact that you're just locked on the same ship with a ton of other passengers who also might have it. I think that is just the worst thing on earth possible.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
One of the reasons why most of these outbreaks do occur in the winter months is that norovirus is passed through close contact, direct contact with food or water that's been contaminated with tiny particulates of infected feces, infected vomit. I know, sorry, this is a morning show.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
But you see these nationwide surges when we're all a little bit closer to each other indoors and not a lot of people are outside as well. Norovirus outbreaks actually declined during that 2020-2021 pandemic season because of the fact that there weren't very many social activities as well.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
So that was maybe we're coming back from a little bit of a depressed time for norovirus into a much more active time for norovirus. But yeah. Neil, you have a twinkle in your eye, but I do not because it is just the worst thing on earth. And I hope none of you guys listening are struggling with it right now. Now, let's sprint to the finish of the shortened week with some headlines.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
If you ever thought your phone was a little too good at picking up on hints as to what you wanted for Christmas, you could be entitled to some cash. Apple has agreed to a $95 million settlement in a class action lawsuit alleging that Siri recorded private conversations without user consent.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
The lawsuit claims Siri unintentionally activated and recorded snippets of confidential conversations, which were then shared with third parties like human reviewers or advertisers. If approved by the court, eligible Apple owners in the U.S. could receive up to $20 per day. per Siri-enabled device. Neil, big validation for all the moms out there who think their phones are listening to them.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Oh, my gosh. Reading down that list is a little bit of a dark timeline. I'm going to choose a little bit of a brighter theme to the 2024 box office, and that is PG rating movies actually did very well because a lot of those stories that you mentioned are actually PG rated. I don't want to go down the list again. Yeah.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
But mostly all the movies, the animated movies that were family-friendly did really well because the biggest movie of 2024 was Inside Out 2. It was also the biggest animated movie of all time. Also, it was a big year for Disney as well at the box office. They had a quiet 2023 but came back three of the top five movies of the year.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
And actually, it's 20th Century Division that it recently bought did well as well. as well. Alien Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes kind of snuck in there to boost Disney's year at the box office as well.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
That was surprising because remember, Delta had the huge CrowdStrike meltdown that did delay and cancel a lot of flights in the middle of the year. But again, that was only about one week throughout a year of very on-time departure. So yeah, Delta did really well.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Although they should be kind of looking in the rearview mirror because United Airlines snuck in at number 10, but they have been steadily increasing their on-time percentage by about 1% to 2% per year. So people are saying, some industry analysts are saying that United could eventually catch up and maybe even surpass Delta going forward.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
I love tin hat, Neil, when it comes to airline transportation times.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
I want you to share the podcast with someone who is doing dry January this month. Nothing like a little Neil and Toby to take the edge off in these cold January days.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Yeah, let's dive into that social media law from Florida because it also extends to something beyond social media, and that is adult content websites. The law also requires adult content websites to age verify for access with the goal of protecting kids from certain websites on the internet. It's not just Florida either. We are seeing this really across the South and across the country.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Tennessee, South Carolina, and a growing list of 14 other states now have residents who can no longer access those popular adult content websites, those popular pornography websites because of age verification laws. ALO Networks, which owns some of the biggest adult content websites out there, they decided to just block users because they don't think that they can
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
actually comply and perform these reasonable AIDS verification requests. And there's been some pushback, obviously. Some free speech advocates say that it's just going to push people to even darker and more dangerous parts of the Internet. And they're not doing much to protect the actual people that they are trying to protect here.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
So there's definitely going to be some Supreme Court arguments that do come down related to these cases. But I do think that's a theme of some of the laws that you described here is just protecting— child protections when it comes to online activity.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
So what else is going on other than these child protection laws, other than the minimum wage increases? Some other laws that are going into effect. Illinois gyms must allow memberships to be canceled by email or on their websites. I know a lot of people have had that really tough experience with the gym trying to actually cancel the membership. You may sign up for around the New Year's time.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
California gave child influencers similar protections that child actors have. You have to, you know, if you are dancing on social media with your mom or dad, there are now new laws that do allow you to, you know, recoup some of the financial gain that they are receiving. Also, Minnesota adopted those ticketing transparency laws. Five states adopted privacy. pay transparency laws as well.
Morning Brew Daily
2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
But then there's some weird laws that are going in effect as of 2025. California now allows marijuana dispensaries and venues to offer live entertainment. So think maybe similar to just like a club where you're drinking alcohol. Now they're having these clubs that can bring a band in where people are allowed to smoke marijuana.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
All right. In this year is earnestness. Out is aloofness. We are trying hard and taking things seriously in 2025. In, long-distance running. Out, long-distance relationships. Just move already. It's good for the soul. In, pronouncing words incorrectly, oddly enough. So we're giving ourselves some grace. Out is saying it Chipotle or Nvidia. Those two are crossing the line. And then finally, in...
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Yeah, Amsterdam is definitely going to be the kind of blueprint there. Washington, D.C. actually has a cashless retail prohibition law coming down that mandates retailers must accept cash payments. If you've ever seen those signs that say, we prefer charge, we do not accept cash here, that is now against the law in Washington, D.C.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
And then New York passed a car wash promotion disclosure law, which requires car washes to clearly inform customers about promotion expiration dates.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
It's very important. I can't believe people are driving in New York, let alone washing their cars. So again, Neil said this could potentially help you not run afoul of some of these laws. Hopefully none of these you're running into and you're not facing down any legal issues in 2025. But those are some of the laws that you should keep an eye on.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Moving on to the next story, the FBI has found no definitive link between the devastating New Orleans attack that killed 14 people on New Year's Day and the Cybertruck that was blown up in Las Vegas hours later. But there is one commonality between the two. Both the Cybertruck in Vegas and the Ford F-150 Lightning truck used in New Orleans were rented through the same car-sharing app, Turo.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
It's put the once high-flying startup, which had plans to go public last year, squarely in the national crosshairs and raised questions about its security and vetting process. As of last year, Turo had 360,000 cars listed on its platform, where users could rent them out in a peer-to-peer system similar to Airbnb.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
But the company said that neither driver had anything in their backgrounds that would have raised alarms during the app's screening process. Still, the owner of the truck used in the New Orleans attack told the New York Times that he plans to stop using Turo going forward to make extra money.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Neil Turo was worth $1.5 billion back in 2020, according to PitchBook, but the IPO it registered back in 2021 has yet to materialize, and now it's found itself at the center of two tragedies as we enter into 2025.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
It's not super rare. And also, Turo is a company that, I called it a high-flying startup, and it is a very large company. It reported $880 million in revenue in 2023. That was up 18% year over year. It did saw its profits fall from $154 million to $14 million, which may have clouded that IPO picture. This was a pretty buzzy company at one time. Celebrities like 2 Chainz, NBA, NFL players,
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
have invested in Turo. It's got almost 1,000 employees, so it is a relatively robust company as well. Let's also just zoom out a little bit to some of the aftermath from these attacks. We did see the Sugar Bowl happen after it was delayed in New Orleans. Notre Dame won that game. Some other updates from the two cases as well.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Bourbon Street in New Orleans is back open to the public as of yesterday, obviously with an increased police presence there. The FBI also clarified some earlier reports that said that the Army veteran involved in New Orleans had help. Instead, they claimed he did act alone. Surveillance footage kind of caught him placing coolers down with explosives that have since been disarmed.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Business news podcast. Absolutely. Out. Being uninformed. I feel like that one speaks for itself. Neil, you don't have a Toby's Trends segment, but do you have an in and out?
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Also, investigators reiterated that there wasn't a clear link between the two. Again, we've talked about the fact that they both used Turo. Both men did serve portions of their U.S. Army careers in combat. what was formerly Fort Bragg, it is now Fort Liberty in North Carolina. They also spent time in Afghanistan during similar times, though at different locations.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
And of course, they both use Turo. But so that's kind of just a rundown of what we know now on the two attacks.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
The last time Tesla suffered an annual sales dip was in 2011, which if you look at it on the chart of Tesla's vehicle sales, it's just a mere blimp. That was before it released the Model 3, the Model Y, which accounts for 95% of its deliveries at this point. Tesla leaned on promotions and price cuts. That was a big theme of last year, where they were just slashing prices.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
They had the margin to do so in order to try to spur demand, but there's only So much you can do in the face of very tepid, very minimal consumer demand for electric vehicles. Meanwhile, you mentioned competition from legacy automakers, but definitely the biggest competition is coming out of China. BYD actually outsold Tesla in electric vehicles for the second quarter in a row.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Tesla still nabbed it overall on the year, so it still can claim it's the largest EV seller in the world. But yeah, the competition... Mixed with the tepid demand is definitely why we saw electric vehicle deliveries falter for the first time.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
Up next, it is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time. It is Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where we pick one stock who is still in holiday break mode and one stock that has locked back in. But since it was a shortened trading week, we bent the rules a little bit and chose two non-stocks that still fit the spirit of the segment.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
I won the pre-show 45-minute power interval Peloton session, so I am up first. And my stock of the week is Squid Games 2 because it has been a smashing success. Season 2 debuted to 68 million views in its first four days available, which officially makes it Netflix's biggest premiere ever.
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2025 Laws Take on Social Media and Minimum Wage & Tesla Suffers First Sales Slip
It's also already climbed the ranks to land at number seven on Netflix's most popular non-English shows, a metric that takes into account a show's first 91 days of viewership, so it's still got more room to run. Still, it's got a long way to go before it can dethrone Netflix's all-time biggest show, which is the first season of Squid Games that is sitting pretty at 265 stars. million views.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Every time I think we've invented every possible canned cocktail imaginable, the alcohol industry turns out a new one. But by new, I also mean old because they haven't created anything that a frat party in America hasn't already seen and drank a thousand times over. But yeah, this category is... kind of an old thing. Surfside really did bring it to the forefront in 2022.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
If you're working on building out your portfolio, check out public.com. Public is the investing platform for folks ready to take investing seriously.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Yeah, in Q1, they had this revamped value menu that was supposed to drive traffic. But actually what ended up driving a lot of traffic was this meal promotion with a Minecraft movie. It was probably the most successful aspect of getting people back into McDonald's. So one, they're going to lean further into that partnership and partnerships like that in the future.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
But also, the shift in focus is to next week's release of the new chicken strips coming out of McDonald's because fans have been clamoring for this item to return. Obviously, chicken is the hottest new thing in fast food. There's the chicken Big Mac that it rolled out. There's the chicken sandwich wars. Everyone loves chicken, so chicken.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
It's really leaning on chicken to try to get it out of its slump. And then also the beloved snack wrap is rumored to return. We don't know exactly when it will return, but I personally am very excited for that. And then the final thing outside of chicken, because I can't say chicken anymore, is that the chain is testing out these new customizable drinks with some franchisee later this year.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And that comes from learning from Cosmix, which is it's Dutch Bros-esque drive-through coffee and drink purveyor that it's been testing out over the last few years. So it's got a few things that it's cooking up to try to bring those people back, say we're still the McDonald's you know and love. And a lot of them have to do with chicken.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
In their first year on the shelves, they saw 563% growth and then can sales grew or case sales grew from 1.2 million in 2023 to 4.9 million last year. So maybe we're even a little late to this drink of the summer because it's clearly been growing for a few years now. But yeah, honestly, I'm just happy that we have X of the summer starting to drop because it's been a long winter.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And the worst part is that Kohl's shares kind of soared yesterday on this news. They were up as much as 8% at one point, which just shows how much that maybe he wasn't doing that great of a job.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
So even though that the market said, okay, let's get a new CEO in here because Buchanan wasn't the guy, it does kind of, analysts were saying that this does show that it gives the impression that Kohl's is in this perpetual state of chaos because you have so many people coming through who are trying to lead the company. So-
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
It just raises a lot of questions about the due diligence of the process and why the stock jumped 8% after it just wasn't a good hire in the first place. So tough because you're right, they have been dealing with competition from online e-commerce, high inflation, this pullback in consumer spending, this economic uncertainty, and now uncertainty around the CEO position as well.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Microsoft is once again the biggest company in the world after an earnings beat, and they didn't get there by making things cheaper. Yesterday, the tech giant raised prices across its Xbox lineup from soup to nuts, jacking up the price of consoles, controllers, and some new games. The reason for the price hikes, according to Microsoft, is market conditions and rising development costs.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And while it did not explicitly mention tariffs, it did acknowledge that its reliance on overseas manufacturing has led to some uncertainty. It all adds up to an Xbox X series that now costs $599, while a base controller will set you back nearly $70. It ain't cheap being a gamer these days, Neil.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
MoviePass, yes, that MoviePass, is trying to regain its relevance by going after a more degenerate audience than even the most passionate of popcorn and drink throwing movie fans, sports gamblers. It just launched Mogul, a daily fantasy game where players can run virtual movie studios using real box office data to compete with one another.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And speaking of drinks, a word from our sponsor, Planet Oat. Neil, let's play a game of finish each other's sentences. Are you ready?
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Just like in fantasy football, players can draft actors, directors, and entire films based on how well you think they'll do at the actual box office on Rotten Tomatoes or during awards season. For now, the rewards aren't big catch prizes, just digital in-game currency. But the idea is to eventually offer real money prizes down the line.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
You know, MoviePass is a company and brand that just won't seem to die. And now it thinks fantasy gaming is its way back to your attention.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Yeah, and it has 400,000 users on the early access wait list. So I do think there is a demand for this because I do, when a movie's coming out, I'm like, I think this is going to do bad. Like Thunderbolts, for instance, this new Marvel movie, that's a very polarizing movie. It's a very little-known cast of characters.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
It could massively overperform because it's something different, or it could massively underperform. And it would be fun to set a daily fantasy lineup and actually have some stake in the outcome of how that movie does.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Yes, exactly. All right, let's keep going. You are the Planet Oat extra creamy oat milk to my... Iced coffee. You are the Planet Oat barista lovers oat milk to my... Latte. You are the Planet Oat French vanilla oat milk creamer to my... French roast hot coffee.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Well, number one, I'm seeing if journalism can break the chalk curse because it enters as a three to one favorite. But no favorite has won the Derby since Justify back in 2018. So it's been a little bit. But I'm also looking at the weather forecast because it looks like Louisville, Kentucky is going to get some rain. So it could favor, you know, mud runners.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And one mud runner that I want you guys to look at is Final Gambit. 30-1 long shot, but he won his maiden on a rainy day, so he could fare well in those adverse money conditions. Though, he has never run on dirt before, so that's another question mark. So, you know, don't write that down.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
I know, seriously. And I got some more for you if you want them.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
There's some post positions that you want to avoid. Citizen Bowl drew the number one post position, which hasn't produced a Derby winner since 1986. So avoid number one. And then Sandman, which is actually one of the favorites, 6-1, got a really unlucky drawing of post 17. That gate has never won a Derby since its introduction back in 1930. So
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
If you are superstitious or even a little stitious, avoid posts number one and number 17. And then if you want some long shots as well, because there have been long shot winners in the last few years. Rich Strike was 80-1 in 2022. Mystic Dan was 18-1 in 2024. So again, look out for Final Gambit.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And finally, publisher at 20 to 1 because I'm going for publisher because publishers are more important than journalism. And if you ask me to unpack or defend that, I can't, so do not ask.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Great show today, Neil. I wish you all well.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Rich, creamy, and velvety, plus it's dairy-free, peanut-free, and gluten-free.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Let's ride. Get your hands on the oat milk that has it all. Visit planetoat.com for more.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Yeah, Tim Cook hadn't really spoken about tariffs since January of this year, and even then he said Apple was just monitoring the situation, but now he said that Apple could see a $900 million cost related to tariffs in the next quarter. It was interesting, though, what he said about Apple retail stores being flooded by new people trying to beat the tariffs and buy new iPhones.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
He actually says that those sales wouldn't show up in the March quarter, even though a lot of analysts were like, no, they definitely showed up in March quarter. You saw this boost in iPhone sales. And he said that it's mostly going to be in the next quarter coming up. So he's unsure of the impact on the current period.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
So who knows if that was just CEO speak or if it really was that, hey, we didn't actually see as much demand pulled forward as we maybe analysts are expecting. The other thing that they did touch on too is the company's AI strategy, which has been much maligned because Apple intelligence really hasn't been what a lot of people expected it to be.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And an analyst straight up asked Cook, he's like, hey, do you think you're doing well? Like what's going on with Siri? Why did we delay that? And Cook kind of sidestepped the question again, saying that we just want the features to meet Apple's high quality bar. So that's another question mark down the line of if Apple can figure out its AI strategy,
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And then the final aspect of Apple's business that did all right is services, which is app store revenue, Apple TV+, that sort of thing. That grew 12%. That was right in line with expectations. But that business is under threat from a few areas. Namely, there was this app store ruling that is poised to hurt the platform's revenue.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And let's talk about that ruling because Apple took this major L at the hands of Epic Games this week after a judge ruled that the so-called 30% Apple tax on app transactions is dead. The backstory here is that the Fortnite maker Epic Games took Apple to court to fight against what it saw as anti-competitive practices like charging developers a 30% fee on in-app purchases.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Then Sam Altman's Iris scanning crypto startup is setting up shop in the U.S., so prepare your eyeballs. It's Friday, May 2nd. Let's ride.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Back in 2021, a US district judge, Gonzalez-Rogers, sided with Epic and ordered Apple to give developers more leeway on payments. Apple took the fight to the Supreme Court, but whiffed, and then turned around and created a new system that forced apps with external sales to pay a 27% fee.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Epic Games saw this and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, you are blatantly violating the court's orders by continuing to oppose those fees. And Judge Gonzalez-Rogers agreed. She said in an 80-page ruling released this week that Apple was failing to comply with her prior orders and even called out execs by name
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
saying Cook chose poorly, and Apple's VP of Finance outright lied under oath to gain an anti-competitive advantage. So this has felt like this never-ending battle between these two companies, but against all odds, it looks like Apple has been defeated.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Epic Games was obviously maybe the sacrificial lamb here. They took the fight to Apple, but other apps and other companies have been very closely monitoring the situation because Spotify just submitted yesterday an app update that includes an ability to link out to the web for the payment, which finally escapes that closed garden that you're speaking about.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Other companies were sitting and waiting on this moment because they're like, hey, we don't want to pay the piper 30%. Every time you buy something within our app, we should be able to handle that payment ourselves. So it wasn't just an Epic versus Apple thing. It was really an Epic versus Apple versus the entire app store sort of thing.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Take off your glasses and clear the sleep from your eyes because Sam Altman's Iris Scanning Crypto Project World is coming to the United States. After spending years dutifully scanning eyeballs outside US borders, the regulatory environment under Trump's crypto-friendly administration made it possible for Altman & Co to unveil both its physical orbs and its crypto token inside US borders.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
The stated goal of World is to make WorldID the primary method for verifying humans online. If that sounds like the arsonist putting out the fire, it kind of is. Altman's role in advancing artificial intelligence at OpenAI is part of the reason why Altman feels like there needs to be a system for distinguishing real humans from computers.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
World thinks that the way to do this is to gather biometric data on millions of people via scans of their eyeballs, then assign each one a digital ID that lives on the blockchain. To incentivize this more than slightly black mirror-y concept, volunteers receive 16 world coins, the crypto aspect of the project, that Altman thinks can act as a universal basic income for millions.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
If that all sounds like something you want to try, you can hit up a world space location around Atlanta, LA, Miami, Nashville, or San Francisco, to get your ID into the system. And if that sounds like something you don't want to try, just close your eyes, Neil.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
It's crazy, but it is where we are heading. And Tools for Humanity, which is the parent company of World, is signing real-world partnerships to put this into action. They announced this partnership with Match Group to provide age verification for Tinder users, specifically in Japan. So that is real-world utility right there.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
A lot of people have pushed back against this though and say, hey, this is a problem that needs to be solving, but this probably isn't the way to do it.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Some crypto people on Twitter were saying that it's much better to have a continual verification system because if you just scan in once and you have the ID, then you have this very valuable data set of, quote, real people that you could buy, that you could steal, that you could hack and use for nefarious purposes.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
So maybe a continuous re-enrollment system is better than a one-time verification system.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Well, it's Friday, which means it's Stock of the Week, Dog of the Week time, where we bring you one stock that cooked its pasta perfectly al dente and one stock that left it in too long and made some mush. Despite the market's mini run the past few days, S&P 500 has finished up eight straight days. It still had its fair share of mush, so we're bringing you two Dogs of the Week.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
And since I won the pre-show game of golf, Yes, just golf. I'm up first, and my dog of the week is Amazon. Amazon reported earnings yesterday and actually beat expectations, bringing in $155 billion in revenue. But it was the softer-than-expected guidance that caused its stock to slip as much as 5% after hours.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
Its revenue and income forecasts weren't way outside of what analysts were expecting, but it was the mention of some tariff uncertainty and recession fears that spooked investors. Another potential warning sign was that its important Amazon Web Services unit missed expectations for the third straight quarter, but still grew at a 17% clip.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon is well-positioned to weather any tariff headwinds because it has such a diverse seller base, they can probably dodge and weave some costs being passed onto consumers and could emerge from all of this stronger, much like it did after the pandemic.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
It really is the unpredictable tariffs ahead that make planning more difficult, which is probably why we saw this negative reaction from investors, despite the relatively strong report. And this morning, Amazon is only down about 2% in pre-market trading, So I'm calling this a baby dog of the week, a puppy of the week, if you will, Neil.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
One final e-commerce headwind that we have to mention is that this major loophole that let you get all those cheap fast fashion items directly from China. actually closed one minute past midnight last night. That is the day-minimus exemption, which allows shipments of goods worth under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free. This is what led to the rise of Timu, what led to the rise of Xi'an.
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Apple’s App Store Reign Ending? & Eyeball-Scanning Crypto's US Launch
So there was just this huge volume of packages coming into the country, but now that loophole is officially closed. So if you haven't felt the bite and the sting of tariff rises in prices, you might start feeling it now because Xi'an and Timu definitely have to raise prices is closed, which it just was as of midnight. Up next, we got Neil's Dog of the Week.