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TOGETHER WITH
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Good morning. With
Covid-19 hospitalizations on the rise, we want to express our
appreciation for the healthcare workers on the front lines of this
pandemic (and, we should add, the folks developing vaccines and
therapeutics). Thanks for all you do to keep us healthy.
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NASDAQ
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11,899.34
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- 0.21%
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S&P
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3,609.53
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- 0.48%
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DJIA
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29,783.35
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- 0.56%
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GOLD
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1,880.60
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- 0.24%
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10-YR
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0.860%
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- 4.50 bps
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OIL
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41.30
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- 0.31%
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*As of market close
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Stimulus update: There is none. Top Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have not met for weeks,
and their current proposals ($500 billion from the GOP, $2.2 trillion
from the Dems) aren’t even in the same ballpark. Governors across the
U.S. are asking for federal help as they dial up restrictions on businesses and social life.
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Election: President Trump fired
Chris Krebs, a former Microsoft exec and director of the federal agency
that was created to ensure a secure election process. Krebs has said
there was no evidence of a tainted election, while Trump has made false
claims of widespread voter fraud and has refused to concede to Joe
Biden.
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Francis Scialabba
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It was the best of times (the holidays), it was the worst of times (a pandemic). So how are retailers faring right now?
First up, Walmart
In Q3, e-commerce sales at the world's biggest retailer surged
79% and profits 56%—impressive numbers despite a subdued back-to-school
season and the petering out of government stimulus. However...
- After rising 10% and 9.3% the first two quarters, same-store sales growth slowed to 6.4%.
The takeaway: Foot
traffic is down, but customers are spending more per trip and taking
advantage of curbside pickup and delivery. Walmart's massive store
footprint remains an important complement to growing e-commerce
ambitions.
Home Depot's turn. Consumers are still directing unused travel, restaurant, and leisure funds to shiplap, mulch, and questionably large skeletons. Home Depot's net profit and U.S. same-store sales both rose 24% annually, beating expectations.
Pulse check: Home
Depot and Walmart are situated in retail categories that have remained
bright spots for consumer spending amid the pandemic—household
essentials and home improvement.
- Other retail categories, like apparel, haven't been so lucky. Yesterday, Kohl's reported a 13.3% decline in Q3 sales.
- And overall, October retail sales eked out 0.3% growth, below expectations and September's 1.6% gain.
What's next?
As Covid-19
cases rise, anxious consumers are once again squirreling away essentials
like TP, cleaning products, and dry food. In areas with worsening
outbreaks, Walmart has seen supplies run short, though CEO Doug McMillon
assured investors his superstores are better equipped to handle things
this go-around.
- Other retailers are also taking precautions:
Kroger, Wegmans, and Publix are reducing store hours and reinstating
purchase limits on paper products, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant
spray.
Bottom line: Covid
has fundamentally changed people's shopping habits. The current
trajectory of the pandemic and recent earnings reports indicate that
fewer in-person trips, more e-commerce, and curbside pickup are here to stay.
+ For more stories like this...sign up for Retail Brew, our 3x/week retail newsletter.
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Tom Williams/Getty Images
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Judy Shelton, President Trump's nominee for the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, was rejected
in a 50–47 vote on the Senate floor yesterday. Republican Senators Mitt
Romney, Susan Collins, and Lamar Alexander broke party lines to block
her.
In econ circles, Shelton's more controversial
than creamed spinach as a Thanksgiving side. Critics have questioned
her personal ties to Trump (she was a former campaign adviser), her
assertions that the Fed should be less independent, and her former
advocacy for the abandoned gold standard.
- Democratic Sen. Ron
Wyden criticized the confirmation push, saying Shelton's "ideas are so
wacky and outdated, giving her authority over the dollar would be like
putting a medieval barber in charge of the CDC."
Looking ahead...Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can still bring Shelton's name up for
consideration if he gets at least 50 votes together.
+ While we're here: Shelton
was vying for one of two open seats on the Fed's Board of Governors.
Learn more about what they do and who's in charge in the Brew's Fed diversity map.
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Yesterday, Amazon announced it's diving headfirst into a new sector: healthcare. The e-comm giant rolled out a prescription drug delivery service.
- OK, so Amazon actually
waded into healthcare a while ago—it bought online pharmacy PillPack in
2018. But this is a much bigger initiative.
- Shares in CVS and Walgreens, the U.S.' dominant pharmacies, dipped as much as 9% and 10%, respectively.
How it works: Customers
can use the Amazon app or website to order prescription drugs. Prime
members get free two-day delivery, plus steep discounts (up to 80% off
generics).
Big picture: The healthcare sector is big and ripe for disruption. But the current system is fairly ingrained,
since most people are used to going to their IRL local pharmacies. And
in some cases, switching to a new pharmacy requires visiting the doctor,
which people are hesitant to do as Covid-19 cases soar.
Then again, the era of social distancing may be the perfect time to get consumers used to ordering prescription drugs online.
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SPONSORED BY ATHLETIC GREENS
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We gotta admit, we never thought that Athletic Greens—the
daily nutritional beverage that everyone keeps talking about—would be a
treat for not only our bods, but also our taste buds.
So what’s all the hoopla on this scoop-la? 75
vitamins, minerals, whole food-sourced ingredients, superfoods,
digestive enzymes, prebiotics, probiotics, and the antioxidant
equivalent of 12 servings of fruit and vegetables.
We repeat: All that in just. one. scoop.
Athletic
Greens’s tasty ingredients work together to fill the nutritional gaps in
your diet, increase energy and focus, aid with digestion, and support a
healthy immune system. The best part? No pills and it tastes super
scoopin’ delicious.
And now, Athletic Greens is giving away a winter months special with a free year's supply of immunity-supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first order.
Invest in your health today.
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Getty Images/Pool
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Yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter chief Jack Dorsey mic'd up yet again for a remote hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee. To channel Michael Barbaro…
Here's what
you need
toknowabout it:
- Republican lawmakers were most concerned
about the platforms' content moderation policies, imploring the CEOs to
intervene less in user activity. Sen. Joni Ernst also raised issues
around Facebook's plans to add end-to-end encryption and questioned
whether that would impede efforts to root out illegal activity.
- Senators also brought up the spread of misinformation, antitrust, and whether these products could be considered addictive.
- Both CEOs said President Trump's accounts would face tougher rules after he's no longer president.
Zoom out: Though
Zuckerberg and Dorsey both defended their companies, they made very
different arguments about the path forward. Zuckerberg said Facebook's
ultra-sophisticated algorithms can be deployed to tackle the issues
lawmakers raised. Dorsey favors empowering the user to opt out of
algorithmic sorting that surfaces the most popular (and therefore
potentially the most divisive) content.
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Giphy
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In 2010, a software developer bought two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin.
After this week's rally, a single bitcoin is now worth more than $17,000. That's tantalizingly close to its all-time high of nearly $20,000 set during the crypto frenzy of December 2017.
What's going on?
With bitcoin, it's always dangerous to speculate, but many see the
recent buy-in of institutional names—including Fidelity, Square, and
PayPal—as handing the digital asset some mainstream ~currency~.
One other thing about this rally: No
one's talking about it. Whereas in late 2017 you couldn't go two
Morning Brew newsletters without seeing a bitcoin headline, the
conversation this time around has been tamer.
- Daily tweets about
bitcoin have dropped from 120,000 during the initial boom to around
30k–60k, the managing director of crypto brokerage eToro told
Bloomberg.
Crypto bulls
think that reflects a more sustainable path forward, rather than the
wild speculation that drove prices higher three Thanksgivings ago.
Ray Dalio is not one of them. Yesterday, the hedge fund legend tweeted a few criticisms of bitcoin, saying he'd "love to be corrected."
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Robinhood, the pioneering trading app, is shopping around for banks to help with a 2021 IPO, Bloomberg reports.
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Twitter’s disappearing tweets feature, Fleets, went live yesterday.
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SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told the NYT he’s sitting on about $80 billion in cash and is ready to pounce with more big bets.
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Roger Ferguson,
the CEO of money manager TIAA, is stepping down after 12 years. He’s
rumored to be on the short list for a Biden Cabinet position.
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Conan O’Brien
is ending his daily late-night talk show on TBS and moving to a weekly
variety show on HBO Max. “In 1993 Johnny Carson gave me the best advice
of my career: ‘As soon as possible, get to a streaming platform,’” Conan
said in a statement.
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The following list shows the top five items in which category?
- Colosseum
- Millennium Falcon
- Hogwarts
- Taj Mahal
- Diagon Alley (from Harry Potter)
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When you share the Brew with your network, you earn free swag like our classic Morning Brew t-shirt.
Are
you one of those people who is always going places? Then you probably
need a shirt. Might as well be this bad boy with the Morning Brew logo
plastered across the chest.
Hit the button below to learn more and access your rewards hub.
Click to ShareOr copy & paste your referral link to others:
morningbrew.com/daily/r/?kid=a17a7110
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The largest LEGO sets in history. The Roman Colosseum set was just released, featuring 9,036 bricks.
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| ADVERTISEMENT |
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This Will Be Worse Than Pearl Harbor |
It's hard to imagine an attack the size of Pearl Harbor happening again
on US soil. Especially since we all know what happened to Japan
afterwards. Yet, a video that surfaced recently on the internet
exposes...
Read More › |
Michael J. Fox On Mortality in 'No Time Like the Future'
A Look at Michael J. Fox's Moving New Memoir, 'No Time Like the Future'. The actor, 59, offers hope and humor despite his long struggle with ...
The Latest
President Donald Trump continues to fight the presidential election
results, refusing to concede to President-elect Joe Biden. The
Associated Press declared Biden the winner after he secured Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. On Tuesday, the president fired Christopher Krebs.
Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security
Agency. In a tweet, Trump said the move to fire Krebs came after Krebs
defended the security of the election.
The president said his statement was “highly inaccurate.” Trump’s
campaign has not provided any evidence of widespread voter fraud and
officials have called it “the most secure” election in U.S. history.
As
of 8:30 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday, Trump did narrow the gap slightly
between Biden in Georgia after some uncounted ballots in two counties were found.
Trump still trails Biden by approximately 13,000 votes in Georgia.
Officials in the state say there is no issue with the election equipment
and the votes were missed by human error. The Associated Press has
called Georgia for Biden. If a recount reversed these results, it would
not be enough to change the status of the Electoral College.
In case you missed it:
Trump Fires Top Election Cybersecurity Official After Tweet About Voter Fraud
Twitter CEO Admits Censoring Hunter Biden Story Was ‘Wrong’
“They’re Certifying…Their Own Fraud and Their Own Complicity in Fraud”
SUV Owner Faked Hate Crime Spray-Painting Car with N-Word, ‘KKK’ and Swastikas
In Case You Missed It...
>> Sen. Diane Feinstein: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
>> Fewer Americans Want Gun Control
>>
Abolish the Electoral College?
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