Hey Snackers, Eclipse chasers — aka "umbraphiles" — are booking flights for the perfect aerial view of April 8's total solar eclipse. It could be the first time everyone on a plane agrees that window seats are superior to aisles and that it's OK to clap. Stocks enjoyed a stellar Leap Day, ending February at record highs. The techy Nasdaq had its first record close since 2021 after the Fed's fave inflation gauge met expectations. And traders raised their bets on a summer rate cut. 🧠Arraquiz: Our weekly Snacks Seven Quiz is not an epic sci-fi sequel starring Timothée Chalamet, but it's full of spicy questions. Try the first one: |
- Nearly a third of Americans wear a _____, with half using it daily. (Check your answer.)
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✈️ P.S. We'd love to learn about your travel and car preferences. Take our 10-minute survey. |
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Shrimp cocktails on deck… Norwegian Cruise Line is back with a vengeance. This week, the third-largest cruise company said its annual sales surged 32% from 2019, and it swung to a $166M profit after a $2B loss in 2022. Cabin occupancy more than doubled for the year, while daily revenue per passenger was up 17% from prepandemic levels. To help meet swelling demand, Norwegian added three new ships to its fleet — the most ever in a single year. |
- Port-hop: Norwegian's CEO said cruise demand was "as robust as we have ever seen it," and he forecast that profit would continue to surge.
- High tide: Norwegian's stock jumped as much as 20% on Tuesday, buoying shares of rivals like Carnival and Royal Caribbean, which have also enjoyed record bookings.
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Bingeing #UltimateWorldCruise… like it's the Kardashians. It's expected to be a banner year for cruises with nearly 36M passengers taking to the high seas. Cruises have long been popular getaways, but the rise of remote work and the post-pandemic travel boom have made them more attractive. Royal Caribbean's nine-month Ultimate World Cruise (60+ countries) has become a TikTok sensation with millions of views. While cruise prices have risen with demand, they can be cheaper than comparable land vacays (think: a week with family at Disney World). |
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 THE TAKEAWAY
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Cruises are peak "revenge travel"… The industry has come a long way since 2020, when travel halted and some ships hosted major outbreaks. Now people are thrilled to be packed with thousands of others on floating cities. Cruises let folks make up for lost time by packing several destinations into one voyage (breakfast in the Bahamas, dinner in Turks and Caicos). Travel sites are jumping on deck: Booking.com launched a cruise vertical with 10K sailings across 30 cruise lines and dozens of ports. |
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Power of the pack. Time and time again, we've seen that the collective influence of individual investors can be a significant market force. Nasdaq's proprietary Retail Trading Activity Tracker brings transparency to those transactions. It tracks stock and ETFs traded by retail investors as well as buy/sell ratios per ticker on a daily basis. Stream data directly. Nasdaq's plugin delivers live data from $30B USD/day of retail trades to your spreadsheet, or 3 pre-made excel templates (available to Nasdaq Data Link members). See which tickers are trading heavily each day to try and gauge the momentum of the crowd — and unlock a key layer of insight every time you trade. Discover the power of the Retail Trading Activity Tracker dataset via Nasdaq Data Link. |
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Power of the pack. Time and time again, we've seen that the collective influence of individual investors can be a significant market force. Nasdaq's proprietary Retail Trading Activity Tracker brings transparency to those transactions. It tracks stock and ETFs traded by retail investors as well as buy/sell ratios per ticker on a daily basis. Stream data directly. Nasdaq's plugin delivers live data from $30B USD/day of retail trades to your spreadsheet, or 3 pre-made excel templates (available to Nasdaq Data Link members). See which tickers are trading heavily each day to try and gauge the momentum of the crowd — and unlock a key layer of insight every time you trade. Discover the power of the Retail Trading Activity Tracker dataset via Nasdaq Data Link. |
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Creepy crawlies… A new report from the Reuters Institute said that by the end of last year, nearly half of top news sites had blocked OpenAI's crawlers to stop ChatGPT from ingesting their content. Crawlers are bots that scrape data from across the web. AI companies like OpenAI and Google use crawlers to collect content for training their models. Having access to reputable news info is crucial for AI companies, which have pitched their bots as the future of search. |
- 600+ news publishers have opted out of crawlers from OpenAI, Google, or Common Crawl (a nonprofit).
- Asking nicely: Articles from sites like The New York Times are easily discoverable, and many question whether blocking AI crawlers can effectively protect content.
- Paper trail: Even if blockers fail, the act of opting out may give publishers a stronger case in copyright-infringement suits.
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Two roads diverged in an AI wood… and they're both less traveled by. A division is forming in how publishers and creators respond to the threat from AI. Some are taking the courtroom route: The Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging they trained their bots on millions of Times articles. Several copyright lawsuits have been brought by authors including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin. |
- The other approach: Some publishers are embracing AI by striking licensing deals. OpenAI said it would pay Axel Springer (Business Insider, Politico) to use its content in ChatGPT, and Microsoft teamed up with Semafor for AI-assisted news.
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THE TAKEAWAY |
It's unclear who'll come out on top… If courts find that AI companies infringed on copyrights, publishers could be owed big $$ and companies like OpenAI could see more suits (and lose access to sources they rely on). But publishers that negotiate early licensing deals with AI companies may have a leg up if courts don't rule in their favor. With all the traffic they've already lost to Facebook and Google, publishers might be eager to set a precedent in which they have a financial gain. |
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⚖️ Judgy… Sam Bankman-Fried's legal team argued that the convicted fraudster should serve only about six years in prison. The former FTX CEO's sentencing is set for March 28, and he could face a century behind bars. 💰 Spendy… Gemini, the crypto exchange helmed by the Winklevoss twins, will return $1.1B to customers following the bankruptcy of its crypto-lending partner, Genesis. Gemini had promised its Earn customers interest of up to 8% on crypto it had lent to Genesis. 🤖 Techy… Some Coinbase customers said they couldn't trade crypto and saw incorrect balances of zero as bitcoin prices popped. It's not the first time Coinbase experienced outages during a rally. It blamed a traffic surge. |
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- Corky: Birkenstock's holiday-quarter revenue popped 22% from last year as Americans warmed their toes in comfy clogs. For the first time, closed shoes outsold sandals, giving Birkenstock a winter boost.
- Lag: EA, the studio behind "Madden," announced its second mass layoff in a year, cutting ~5% of its staff and canceling a planned "Star Wars" game. 8K+ gaming workers industry-wide have been laid off this year.
- Bottled: Bud Light maker AB InBev reached a tentative deal with the Teamsters union, averting a 5K-worker strike at its dozen US breweries. Workers will get a 23% pay hike over the contract.
- Plus: Lagging TV ad spend hurt Paramount's Q4 results, but the media co still posted a surprise profit. It expects its streamer, Paramount+, which grew its annual revenue 69%, to be profitable next year.
- ChatSEC: The SEC's investigating whether OpenAI misled investors following the company's claim that temporarily ousted CEO Sam Altman wasn't "consistently candid" with the board.
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The $100 bill is the most common US paper currency |
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- Women's History Month begins
- F1 season opens this weekend in Bahrain
- Earnings expected from FuboTV
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Authors of this Snacks own bitcoin and shares of: Alphabet, Microsoft, and Norwegian Cruise Line |
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