April 27, 2022

The Appetizer

“We did not see a massive influx of retail investors into crypto after the Super Bowl ads.”

– Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at Genesis Trading.

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

• 3.6%: The International Money Fund’s global GDP growth estimate for 2022, down from 4.4%. Keep an eye on U.S. first-quarter GDP released on Thursday.
• 5.6%: The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate.
• 2,088%: The increase in demand for virtual private networks (VPNs) in Russia, compared with the average daily demand in the week leading up to the invasion of Ukraine.
• 14: The number of Market Pulses our Investment Strategy team has published this year.
• 93%: The increase in repair calls for restaurant deep fryers from March 2020 through the end of 2021 due to higher utilization.

Dig In
Streaming Wars

Forget tracking COVID-19 cases, the stock market may be telling us the pandemic is winding down. Netflix fell 35% after losing 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter and said it expects to lose possibly another 2 million this quarter. Are Americans putting the pandemic “Netflix and chill” days behind them, or is competition heating up?

In 2021, there were an estimated 1.3 billion streaming subscriptions globally, up 14% from 2020. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ are the big platforms, but there are dozens more vying for our screen time. And they’re getting a lot of it: The average weekly time spent streaming video content increased to 169.4 billion minutes in February, up 18% year over year.

The amount of content may be starting to overwhelm audiences. There are over 817,000 unique program titles in the U.S. across traditional TV and streaming services. In December 2019, that figure was 646,000.

Despite warmer weather around the corner, there are hundreds of new productions still to be released this year. Binging is the new normal, so expect the streaming wars to continue.

Weekly Specials

To tip, or not to tip, that is the question. People are starting to rethink their pandemic tipping habits.

San Francisco police got a surprise when they pulled over a car driving without its headlights on: “Ain’t nobody in it.” The incident highlights the challenges of human/autonomous vehicle interaction.

During the summer, Midwesterners enjoy boating and swimming in Lake Michigan. Little do they know, it’s actually part of a giant battery. Water gets pumped from a lower reservoir – the lake – to a man-made lake on higher ground, then is released back downhill through huge turbines.

As bad as climate change could prove to be for some, it’s really great for others – such as winemakers in Norway. At 61 degrees north of the equator, Norway is well outside the traditional winemaking band of 30-50 degrees latitude. That’s not stopping producers from dreaming big about the next five to 10 years.

Corporate Lunch

Lulule-man? The athletic apparel company (real name Lululemon) plans to double its overall sales by 2026 by increasing its menswear and international footprint.

The Boring Company (founded by Elon Musk) raised $675 million toward its mission to build underground tunnels that will eliminate “soul-destroying traffic.”

Amazon will allow merchants to add a “Buy with Prime” button on their websites to help it better compete with Shopify.

Procter & Gamble, the maker of Oral B toothbrushes, fragrance-free diapers, and Tide detergent, posted its biggest sales gain in two decades.

Verizon bumped its minimum wage for all U.S. employees to $20 per hour.

Walmart signed a deal with Plug Power to run its forklifts on liquid green hydrogen.

Companies in the S&P 500 are estimated to have grown earnings 6.6% in Q1 2022 compared to last year…but if you exclude the energy sector, earnings growth drops to just 0.7%.