…and Americans' job satisfaction hits a 36-year high
| The bundle becomes a one-dle (AaronP/Getty Images) | |
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Yesterday's Market Moves | | Dow Jones
33,310 (-0.66%) | S&P 500
4,131 (-0.17%) | Nasdaq
12,329 (+0.18%) | Bitcoin
$26,993 (-2.38%) |
| Dow Jones
33,310 (-0.66%) | S&P 500
4,131 (-0.17%) | Nasdaq
12,329 (+0.18%) | Bitcoin
$26,993 (-2.38%) |
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Hey Snackers, Customs officers have unfurled a fruity crime: Americans tried to smuggle hundreds of pounds of Fruit Roll-Ups into Israel, jam-packing their suitcases with the fruit-flavored snacks. Prices for the candy in the country of nearly 10M have soared thanks to (wait for it) a TikTok trend. Stocks were muted yesterday after more data came in supporting an economic cooldown. Weekly jobless claims were the highest since October 2021. Meanwhile, producer prices grew at their slowest pace since early 2021 — more evidence that inflation's easing. | |
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Disney plans to merge Disney+ and Hulu as the streaming wars enter the superapp era | The 800-pound streaming gorilla… isn't done bulking up. Disney yesterday announced plans to marry Disney+ and Hulu into a single mega-streamer sometime this year (our suggested couple name: Huney). The goal: create a "one app experience" so that US bundle subscribers won't have to toggle between the two. FYI: Disney owns two-thirds of Hulu, and reportedly wants to buy the rest from Comcast. Losing subs: Disney shares fell 9% yesterday after the company's first-quarter earnings, which featured a surprise loss of 4M Disney+ subscribers. Bleeding cash: While theme parks are going strong, Disney's streaming biz lost $659M last quarter. CEO Bob Iger said another price hike is coming for Disney+'s ad-free tier. Sum of its parts: Disney said it will also still offer Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ as standalone platforms. Combined, they have 231M subs (versus Netflix's 232M).
One app to rule them all… By bundling its content into one superapp, Disney may hope to boost growth and alleviate streaming fatigue. It's not alone in its content coagulation push: industry players are combining forces in hopes of standing atop the rubble of the streaming wars. Earlier this year, Paramount+ pulled in Showtime content (new rolls-off-the-tongue name: Paramount+ with Showtime), and last month the world was introduced to Max — the result of a marriage between HBO Max and Discovery+. |  | THE TAKEAWAY |
| Consolidation could cure #subscripturation… Subscription saturation is real: Americans spend nearly $50/month on video streamers, and are increasingly looking to cut back. Disney's push to jam diverse content into one offering could be a possible solution. Or, as streamers continue combining (picture: snowballs rolling down a hill), it may inadvertently recreate the cable chaos that subscribers fled in the first place. | |
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The "Great Resignation" saw US job satisfaction hit a 36-year high, but not everyone's included | Sunday scaries took a gap year… Job satisfaction among US workers reached 62% last year according to a new survey — the highest since analysts began tracking the metric in the late '80s. Last year the "Great Resignation" saw a record 51M Americans quit their jobs, but the "Great Reshuffling" saw workers move to positions with higher pay, more flexible schedules, and better benefits. That may have contributed to a happy(er) workforce. Change-seekers: The highest job-satisfaction levels came from people who chose to switch jobs during the pandemic and workers with hybrid schedules. Remote equilibrium: Work-life balance and workload were the metrics that saw the biggest #satisfaction jump since 2021. Flexible schedules helped give rise to the "whenever economy." Drop likely: The survey was conducted last fall, before mass layoffs in the tech sector and before many RTO mandates were hardened.
WFH is down, but not out… Currently, about 35% of workers whose jobs can be done remotely are full-time WFHers — down from 2020's 55%, but up drastically from just 7% prepandemic. While more flexible schedules have boosted happiness, sector leaders like JPMorgan, Disney, and Amazon want workers to find their joy in IRL conference rooms. Despite almost 30K employees signing a petition against the biz's three day/week RTO mandate, Amazon in March opted to stick with the directive. | | THE TAKEAWAY |
| Satisfaction not guaranteed… While job satisfaction has been rising since 2010, many employees remain locked out of key opportunities that increase happiness. Last year, women reported less satisfaction than men in every benchmark, while 40% of workers in the lowest income quartile had no paid sick or vacation time. | |
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| 🤖 Techy… A digital artist launched a so-called memecoin in 27 seconds, demonstrating how easy it is to birth a new crypto. Now others are following suit (#speedrun), sparking fears of an incoming token flood. 🤔 Sus… Do Kwon pleaded not guilty to charges accusing the former crypto superstar of using forged travel docs. Kwon's algo stablecoin, terraUSD, blew up a year ago — erasing $40B in investor value and kicking crypto winter into overdrive. 🍇 Sour… An annual bitcoin conference, Bitcoin 2023, is set to begin in Miami next week. But some local officials and investors have become disillusioned (think: FTX Arena). Now, Miami's mayor has reportedly moved on to (you guessed it) AI. | |
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What else we're Snackin' | Med: Eli Lilly promised the Senate it would stop raising the price of its insulin meds after years of gov't pressure to lower diabetes drug costs. Eli Lilly, Sanofi, and Novo Nordisk supply all of the US's insulin. Newlon: Elon Musk announced that he'd chosen a new CEO for Twitter, saying "she will be starting in ~6 weeks." Musk said he'll transition to being exec chair and CTO. Tesla shares ticked up after the news. Query: Google unveiled its plan to genAI-ify its search engine (expect bot-generated pop-ups). Google's trying to protect its key search biz from the threat posed by Microsoft's ChatGPT-powered Bing. Sweat: Peloton stock fell 8% yesterday after the home fitness company said it was recalling 2.2M spin bikes on reports of seat posts breaking off. In 2021, it recalled 125K treadmills after a child's death. EUAI: The European Parliament overwhelmingly approved a draft text for what could be the world's first AI legislation. If adopted, the AI Act would set privacy and safety requirements for models like CGPT.
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Snack Fact Of the Day | Hollywood's Covid protocols, which ended yesterday, cost California an estimated $223M | | |
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Friday | - Earnings expected from Spectrum Brands
Authors of this Snacks own bitcoin and shares of: Amazon, Disney, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla | |
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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate... See more | |
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