October 5, 2022

The Appetizer

“I had a good feeling off the bat. I just didn’t know where it was going to land or what it was going to hit.”

• New York Yankee Aaron Judge, after hitting his 62nd home run, breaking Roger Maris’ single-season American League home run record.

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

• 4.0%: The rise in orange juice futures prices over the last week as Hurricane Ian made landfall in Florida.
• 14,000 mph: The speed at which NASA’s 1,300-pound DART spacecraft was traveling when it collided with the 525-foot-wide Dimorphos space rock to see if the impact can nudge the asteroid slightly off course.
• 78%: The percentage of U.S. high school students who didn’t get enough sleep (fewer than eight hours) in 2019, up from 69% in 2009.
• 16: The number of teams MLP (Major League Pickleball) is expected to have in 2023, up from 12 in 2022.
• 48 hours: The waiting time to enter Georgia from Russia after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a partial mobilization.

Dig In
E-Commerce After COVID

Online sales spiked as the pandemic forced people to stay home, but the shift toward online shopping was well underway before COVID. In fact, home delivery sales have grown by 800% since 2012.

Who delivers our orders has also changed. We still see FedEx and UPS delivering a lot of packages. But we’ve also seen the U.S. Postal Service and Amazon more frequently, and our same-day restaurant and grocery orders wouldn’t be possible without the gig economy.

Concern over shipping costs hasn’t changed, but it has given rise to the “Amazon Effect,” where potential buyers automatically factor in shipping costs when considering a purchase.

Which leads us to free shipping: Consumers still want it, but they want their items faster. According to AlixPartners, consumers were fine in 2012 with their free shipping orders arriving about 5.5 days later. Now, they want it in just over three.

More changes are afoot, as consumers have returned to in-store shopping in 2022. Is this a new trend? To be determined, but we’ll continue to watch the e-commerce space closely.

Weekly Specials

See if you can relate to this…A new study reports that unnecessary meetings cost companies up to $100 million per year. The researchers defined “unnecessary meeting” as one that an employee could skip, but still be kept in the loop about. In other words, an e-mail would have sufficed.

Most of us knew anecdotally that working from home helped boost home prices over the past few years. Now the San Francisco Federal Reserve (Fed) confirms that remote work directly contributed 15 percentage points to national price growth since November 2019.

Putting off home improvements due to high prices? You may be in luck. The cost of a two-by-four returned to pre-pandemic levels last week. Overall, lumber prices have dropped 70% since the Fed began hiking interest rates in March.

Want to eat healthier? Order your groceries online. Making a grocery list ahead of time may help avoid impulse buys and keep you away from the unhealthy temptations in the checkout line.

Corporate Lunch

Get ready for another Amazon Prime Day, called the “Prime Early Access Sale,” Oct. 11-12.

Lyft will freeze hiring in the U.S. at least until next year as economic instability rattles the company’s stock price.

Tesla produced nearly 366,000 cars in the third quarter. This was a 41% increase from the previous quarter, but still below analyst expectations.

Nike profit fell 22% as supply chain problems and too much inventory continue to weigh on earnings. Maybe this is a forward indicator that inflation is coming dow … higher inventory means bigger discounts?

Three guys have been charged with securities fraud and market manipulation because they allegedly pumped the value of a New Jersey deli to over $100 million. Try bringing that valuation to Shark Tank, fellas

Ford’s Super Duty lineup, which commands more than a 50% market share in utility, mining, construction, and emergency vehicles, is getting more Super as they enter the digital age (where have they been?). Now with a new brain, the trucks give Ford the ability for new software and fleet management tools.

Eisai and Biogen surged after reporting that their experimental drug slowed cognitive decline in patients with early Alzheimer’s.