May 18, 2022

The Appetizer

“I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.”

Ian Goodfellow, the most senior employee to have resigned from Apple due to the company’s work-from-home policy.

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

• 8.3%: The rise in the consumer price index (CPI) in April versus a year ago. We might have hit peak inflation!
• 477: The number of on-the-ground economists employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to track the changing prices of goods and services that make up the CPI.
• 22%: The percentage of tech jobs that were listed as remote in February 2022, compared with 4.4% in January 2020.
• 40%: The percentage of the most popular baby formula brands that were out of stock in late April. The normal rate is 10%.
• 537 million: The number of credit card accounts that were opened in the U.S. in the first quarter of 2022, a new record.

Dig In
Earnings Digest

Every quarter, publicly traded companies are required to let investors know how much money they made (or lost) in the previous three months.

As an investor, you probably invest in a company to share in its earnings through any dividends paid, plus price appreciation. But how do you know if the price of a stock is “cheap” or “expensive?” One measure is the price-earnings (P/E) ratio, the price investors are willing to pay for each dollar of earnings.

Part of the reason why stocks are down this year is that investors are worried about future earnings growth. If growth is less certain, investors are typically willing to pay less for a dollar of earnings.

As of last Friday, 91% of the companies in the S&P 500 have reported earnings for the first quarter. The expected growth rate once all companies have reported is projected to be 9.1%. The forward P/E for the S&P 500 is 16.6x, which is below the 5-year (23.1x) and 10-year (16.9x) averages.

Learn more about first-quarter earnings and our view for equity markets looking forward. Read | Watch | Listen

Weekly Specials

Liam and Olivia are once again the most popular baby names. Americans had 3.64 million babies last year, up slightly from 2020, but still representing an overall decline in the birthrate.

There’s a good reason to think twice about those espresso shots after a late night with the kiddos: A new study links drinking espresso coffee with higher cholesterol, particularly in men.

You never know what treasures you’ll find in the thrift store. The $35 sculpture a Texas woman found beneath a table at Goodwill is actually a 2,000-year-old ancient Roman bust. The piece belonged to King Ludvig I of Bavaria, but has been missing since World War II. How did it end up in Texas?

The UK is thinking outside the box to meet its net-zero carbon emissions goal by 2050 – 22,000 miles outside to be exact. They believe a solar power plant in space may be more cost effective than existing technologies.

The Fed released its semiannual Financial Stability Report, and COVID was not listed as the top threat. Finally!

Corporate Lunch

After 15 years of production and seven generations, Apple is discontinuing the iPod Touch.

In yet another end to an era, the final whistle has blown on the Electronic Arts partnership with FIFA. The company’s soccer game will be renamed to EA Sports FC starting in 2024.

Airbnb launched new features to prepare for summer, including the ability to split up stays across multiple locations. Management called this “the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade.”

Tesla exported the first cars from its Shanghai factory since reopening in April. The Gigafactory was closed for three weeks amid a rise in COVID-19 infections.

Volkswagen is bringing back the Scout as an electric SUV to compete with Jeep and the Ford Bronco, just like its rugged ancestors once did.

Target employees in Virginia filed to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board.

Nestle is shipping baby formula to the U.S. from Europe.

Disney said it will carry four minutes of commercials an hour on the ad-supported version of its streaming service.