July 20, 2022

The Appetizer

“To celebrate this serendipitous event, 7-Eleven is gifting Allie and Chase with seven years of FREE coffee to help them stay awake on their latest nights (or earliest mornings!).”

7-Eleven in a statement after a couple in West Virginia had a baby boy at a 7-Eleven on 7/11.

Now, on to the numbers. Drum roll, please …

• 5.2%: Consumers’ one-year inflation expectations according to the latest University of Michigan survey.
• 13.5 billion light years: The distance that light from one galaxy traveled in the images seen by the James Webb Space Telescope.
• 22: The number of high school state championship track meets that will include a javelin event, up from 17 in the past six years.
• 300 million: The number of items bought on Amazon’s annual Prime Day event worldwide, up from 250 million items last year.
• 500: The number of couples that attended NYC’s “Celebrate Love: A (Re)Wedding” event, offering a chance to redo their wedding ceremony after pandemic-related wedding disruptions.

Dig In
Prime Time Shopping

With Amazon’s Prime Day behind us, we have the retail sector on our minds.

Online sales for Prime Day jumped 8.5% compared to last year, as consumers took advantage of discounts offered by Amazon as well as coinciding sales by other retailers.

This follows a stronger-than-expected overall retail sales number that showed consumers are still spending despite higher prices.

But inflation isn’t the only challenge for retail: Pandemic reopenings shifted consumer preferences, and supply chain catch-ups have stores holding excess inventory that consumers no longer want.

That may be good news for shoppers’ wallets. Target acknowledged last month that discounts were coming to help move product, while Lowes and Home Depot also reported higher inventory.

If early reports provide any indication, some retailers may be off to a good start in clearing their warehouses. For example, Amazon announced the Prime Day event sold over 300 million items, with consumer electronics, household essentials, and home goods being the most popular. That’s 100,000 items sold per minute. Wow.

Weekly Specials

The kid delivers – the Webb telescope’s first images are out of this world.

Some BMW owners will have to pay $15 to $30 per month to use their heated seats, depending on which country they live in. But what’s next? A subscription to unlock the brakes?

Credit reports are about to look a lot healthier. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau determined that unpaid medical debt is not a good predictor of overall credit worthiness. Unpaid medical debts under $500 will also come off reports next year.

Last week, the euro briefly fell to its weakest level against the U.S. dollar for the first time since 2002. With domestic flights expensive right now, that Euro trip may look pretty good. Just don’t count on your bag reaching your destination.

Germany revealed new climate measures in its quest to become carbon neutral by 2045. The plan calls for more electric vehicle charging stations, increased public transit, and more bike lanes. What’s not on the table is a speed limit for the Autobahn, where excessive speed (sometimes more than 120 mph!) burns more fuel.

Corporate Lunch

Quarterly earnings are starting to drop, and investors are looking for some positive news. Analysts expect S&P 500 earnings to have grown 4.2% in the second quarter compared to last year.

Honestly, Nevermind: The title of Drake’s seventh studio album, which is also what Elon Musk told Twitter after backing out of the $44 billion deal to acquire the social media platform.

Delta Airlines and Amazon are calling for computer science to be taught in U.S. elementary and high schools alongside Code.org, which claims the country has 700,000 vacant computer jobs.

Google is countersuing Match Group over Play Store policies. Tinder users hang in the balance and would probably switch to iPhone in a heartbeat if they had to.

Peloton will be outsourcing all of its in-house manufacturing to Taiwanese manufacturer Rexon Industrial in an effort to turn around the business. They believe this move will simplify their supply chain and benefit their cost structure.

Pepsi signaled they will likely be increasing prices as inflation remains at decade highs. The company is also looking to trim costs and exploring cheaper packaging. Please don’t put more air in the bags of Lay’s chips.