TOGETHER WITH
Hey there weekday warrior,
Jeff Bezos just hit Walmart with “the future is now, old man.” And, good news, Google is evil again.
Enjoy the next 4 minutes and 19 seconds of blue-chip news and commentary.
Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,
CEO, entrepreneur, born in 1964
If you want to make a $187B omelet, you gotta make a few employees p*ss in bottles…
Listen, it's not a d*ck measuring contest, but if it was, Jeff Bezos would have Sam Walton beat… and it isn’t particularly close (length and width, in case you were wondering). You see, Amazon (+1.1% // AH: -4.0%) (unofficially) surpassed Walmart's (+0.3%) quarterly revenue for the first time ever. Walmart doesn't actually report for a couple of weeks. But when it does, it's expected to do ~$180B in sales. Sad.
Meanwhile, AMZN's top line hit $187B (so, yeah, it's fair to enforce the mercy rule). The sales # beat the Street's expectations, as did earnings. Actually, saying earnings beat would be disingenuous... Amazon’s earnings went belt to a** on analysts’ consensus. Shoutout to all the laid-off Amazon employees for creating shareholder value.
But it wasn't all making WMT its b*tch...
Amazon Web Services continues to suffer from success.
Despite its massive market share and huge head start, slowing growth has investors worried. Cloud revenue growth (+19%) was a "disappointment" compared to 30%+ from competitors Google and Microsoft. It probably didn't help that AWS sales merely met expectations.
But that wasn't the worst part...
It was Andy Jassy's outlook that had investors going all "I'm not mad, I'm disappointed." Top line growth for the current quarter is expected to come in between 5% and 9% (below analysts’ guesstimates). Five percent would be the slowest/most pathetic quarterly growth figure since going public. You hate to see it (unless you’re Walmart).
But just because sales growth is slowing doesn't mean Andy Jassy’s insatiable appetite for AI data centers, GPUs, and networking gear will. Amazon expects its CAPEX to top $100B in 2025. Probably just a coincidence that Google said it will spend $75B and Microsoft will drop $80B.
The Biggest Disruption to IP Since Disney
Fun fact: Disney’s princess IP has generated over $46.4B in revenue.
Here’s another: Elf Labs secured 100+ historic trademarks for characters like Cinderella, Little Mermaid, Snow White, and Rapunzel! Now, they’re using advanced patented tech to bring them to life right in your living room. Think headset-free VR and AI-powered talking toys.
Now, get this—they’re launching three new princess franchises in 2025 (two already funded), and are backed by a team that’s closed over $6B in licensing deals throughout their careers.
But here’s the catch—only limited shares remain. The company has seen record demand & their round closes on February 12th.
Disclosure: This is a paid advertisement for Elf Labs’ Regulation CF offering. Please read the offering circular at elflabs.com.
+ Risk management hates this one simple trick
The Fed released brand-new (easier) parameters for its annual bank stress test. This year, the big swingin’ banks gotta answer “what would happen if the US economy got bodied with a 10% joblessness rate and a 33% drop in home prices?“
Big banks were pleased with the Fed grading on a curve (obviously). Post-2008 crisis, the Fed stress test went the way of post-9/11 TSA rules (read: doing wayyy too much). Financial institutions have complained for years that the tests were far too harsh. Industry group Bank Policy Institute, which includes JPMorgan, (+2.3%) Citigroup, (+3.6%), and Goldman Sachs (+1.9%) went so far as to sue the Fed in December over the test guidelines.
Bank shares jumped Wednesday as the lowered stress test bar pointed to Grade A bank lobbyists a friendlier financial regulation environment under Trump.
+ Google (+0.1%) is taking heat from inside and out these days. Employees are acting like baby back b*tches after the “Don’t be evil” corporation revised its AI ethical guidelines on Tuesday. Google repealed its pinky promise to not use AI to develop weapons and surveillance tools. Now its Karens employees are banding together on their internal message board “Memegen” to slam Sundar Pichai for going War Dogs-mode.
More concerning than Google using robots to build weapons is Gemini’s troubling disinformation campaign on Gouda cheese. In this episode of “yank an embarrassing sporting event commercial,” Gemini made an Apple New AI summary level whoopsie. The ad displayed a false stat from an AI chat that claimed Gouda accounts for 50-60% of the world’s cheese consumption. Not even close. The marketing team was forced to update the Super Bowl spot, but not before cheesemakers everywhere freaked out.
+ Smokey says “Only YOU can film electric utility companies starting forest fires…”
Southern California Edison (-2.4%) went all “Yeah, I did, I think… let me think…” regarding videos that seem to show a link between its equipment and the Eaton Fire in LA that burned 14k acres. Edison is hedging its PR risk, though. They’ve acknowledged that the fire sure looks like their fault, but concrete evidence has yet to appear. And Edison is praying there’s a gender reveal party it can blame this on.
SCE has already taken responsibility for the smaller Hurst Fire in LA. The company pulled a reverse Billy Joel and filed a notice with the CA Public Utilities Commission that its equipment was responsible for that fire, which only blazed up 800 acres (and didn’t kill anyone). Edison shares have been doing their best Nikola (-4.4%) impression since California got grilled.
+ Roblox AH (-11.0% // AH: +1.4%) reported a miss on quarterly bookings and daily active users. Shares took a nosedive. Currency traders are furiously watching the Robux exchange rate.
+ RIP to the industrialist monopoly era. Honeywell (-5.6%) is planning to do its best GE impression by spinning off its aerospace division.
+ Pinterest (+0.8% // AH: +18.5%) shares mooned after it reported a revenue beat and raised Q1 expectations, and CEO Bill Ready can finally pin himself on his “Success Inspo” board.
+ E.l.f. Beauty (+1.3% // AH: -24.8%) cut its full-year guidance, sending shares into a death spiral. And somehow CEO Tarang Amin found a way to blame the downturn on the LA fires. Are you happy now Souther California Edison?
+ Three Places to Get the Best Returns on Your Cash. #2: In one of those Bitcoin ATMs.
🔥 I’ve studied over 200 kids—the highly successful ones have parents who did 9 things early on. Give them a small $1M loan.
FYI, TWC might be compensated if you click on the links above. So, what are you waiting for? Start clicking.
+ US stocks “eked out gains as traders parsed mixed earnings ahead of jobs data.” (Bloomberg)
+ The 10-year yield “[was] up on Thursday as investors looked ahead to January’s nonfarm payrolls report.” (CNBC)
+ Oil “prices settled lower on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump repeated a pledge to raise U.S. oil production, unnerving traders a day after the country reported a much bigger-than-anticipated jump in crude stockpiles.” (Reuters)
+ Bitcoin “continued its downtrend this week, dropping briefly below $95,600 during the trading day.” (CoinTelegraph)
+ The three most talked about stocks on WallStreetBets in the past 24 hours were: 1) Nvidia +3.0% 2) Palantir +9.7% 3) Amazon +1.1% // AH: -4.0%
⏪ Yesterday, Eli Lilly, Roblox, The Hershey Company, Peloton, Honeywell, Under Armour, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Philip Morris, AstraZeneca, Hilton, Kellanova, Yum China, Air Products & Chemicals, and ConocoPhillips reported in the AM
Amazon, Cloudflare, Fortinet, Pinterest, e.l.f. Beauty, Affirm, Cleanspark, Powell Industries, Take-Two, Microchip Technology, and Bill dropped earnings after the bell
⏩ Today we’re keeping an eye on…
+ Titan America
+ The January jobs report drops
Yesterday, I asked, “What's more useless?”
MicroStrategy stock (you can literally just buy Bitcoin) got 55.9% of the vote.
Here’s what some of you guys had to say…
MicroStrategy stock: “Alexa in a toddlers room is your biggest ally. No idea what microstrategy means. Dumb name. ”
Amazon Alexa devices: “A glorified timer”
MicroStrategy stock: “Michael Saylor can't run 3 timers while I cook dinner.”
Amazon Alexa devices: “Bitcoin can appreciate in value at least and not bug my house”
MicroStrategy stock: “At least I am adding value somewhere with Alexa snooping on my conversations.”
And here’s today’s question…
What is the greatest mall store of the 2000s?
Oh, and one more thing…
What did you think about today's newsletter?
Does this look like the face of a guy you should take financial advice from?
No, it’s the face of an individual who is financially irresponsible/dumb enough to be talked into spending money on a family photo shoot that he could have just done with his iPhone. So, act accordingly...
This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an investment recommendation. All content is created for entertainment, educational, or informational purposes only. Do your own research, or do yourself a favor and hire a professional.