Hey there weekday warriors,

Today we’re breaking down the biggest IT disaster in history. Speaking of disaster, we’re diving into the latest on SunPower.

Enjoy the next 4 minutes and 19 seconds of blue-chip news and commentary.

Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,

+ US stocks “fell on Friday as more details over a global IT outage trickled in and the major averages failed to recover from a sell-off that saw the Dow snap a run of wins.” (Yahoo! Finance)

+ The 10-year Treasury yield “ticked higher on Friday as investors considered the path ahead for interest rates after the latest comments from Federal Reserve officials." (CNBC)

+Oil “settled over $2 lower on Friday at the lowest level since mid-June as investors eyed a possible ceasefire in Gaza, while a strengthened dollar drove values down further.” (Reuters)

+ Bitcoin “has been gradually inching higher toward the $70,000 mark, indicating that the sentiment remains positive.” (Cointelegraph)

+ The three most talked about stocks on WallStreetBets in the past 24 hours were: 1) Crowdstrike -11.1% 2) Nvidia -2.6% 3) C3.ai -1.4%

The market moves you need to know about…

Nothing to see here… Amex just topped $2B in card fee revenue for the first time and grew sales by double digits for the 24th quarter (I’ll save you pulling up the calculator app… that’s 6 years) in a row. Still, Amex missed top-line expectations, sending shares down 2.7% on the day.

Imagine being deemed incompetent by the US government. Listen, I’m not saying Comerica is the new Wells Fargo, but some people are. During its earnings call, Comerica announced that Uncle Sam won’t renew its contract as the administrator of the Direct Express program (think: government welfare) for nearly 5M recipients. Its warning about net interest income falling didn’t help its case, either. Shares fell 10.4% on Friday.

Crowd work

Source: Giphy

IT departments were putting up all-time “Did you try turning it off and back on again?” numbers Friday…

You see, while you were still sleeping, some poor bastard was hitting send on an update that ended up causing what is being called the biggest IT outage in history. It’s what Y2K coulda been…

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike (-11.1%… which feels like a pretty light punishment) said “a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts” sent the entire Microsoft cloud ecosystem into a death spiral.

Windows users got hit with the dreaded “blue screen of death.” If you ever downloaded too much ‘adult content’ on your shared family computer via Limewire circa 2001, you know exactly what I’m talking about…

Crowdstrike and Microsoft stressed it was not a cybersecurity attack… which is exactly what companies would say if they were trying to cover up a major cybersecurity attack.

The fallout

Nobody was safe on Friday.

Microsoft cloud users ranging from doctors’ offices to TV broadcasters were offline for most of the morning. Airlines also got their d*ck kicked in by the sh*tstorm, forcing thousands of delays across the country.

But we can all agree that the worst part is the insufferable Mac people going all “I told you so”…

+ It appears SunPower is about to go the way of Joey Politics’ re-election bid…

SunPower got put in a body bag by Guggenheim on Friday. Shares of SunPower fell 55.0% after a Guggenheim analyst said what we were all thinking about the solar company: SunPower is “entering a wind-down process that will likely end in the sale of the company's remaining assets and the delisting of the equity.”

To be fair, they might be onto something… shares were down 70% last week after the solar company said it would halt “new leases, installations or product shipments.”

The renewable energy play is on life support as it struggles to raise much-needed additional capital. The entire residential solar industry has been rocked by high interest rates and waning demand.

+ Men will literally play EA Sports College Football 25 for 36 hours straight instead of going to therapy…

The first edition of Electronic Arts (-4.3%) College Football to drop in a decade is already putting up Heisman numbers. The Deluxe Edition (which gave gamers access 3 days early) sold 2.2M copies at $99.99 each. That’s a $200M pre-launch…

“I immediately regret this decision.” - every college athlete who agreed to be featured in the game for $600 (and a copy)

+ What’s that? You thought service at Starbucks (+6.8%) was bad now? Just wait until Elliott implements its “turnaround plan” (read: firing your favorite blue-haired barista).

Activist investor Elliott Management officially disclosed a “sizable” stake in the preferred coffee chain of Target shoppers. Paul Singer and the homies have already been engaging with the company on ways to suck less (read: cut massive employee costs and slash promotions).

Oh, and…

+ Ex-eBay worker who sent bloody pig mask to couple gets slap on wrist in cyberstalking plot. The bloody mask was child’s play compared to the book on surviving the loss of a spouse they sent…

+ The ultra-wealthy just gained $49 trillion in wealth thanks to stocks. What’s your excuse (… besides not being ultra-wealthy)?

FYI, TWC might be compensated if you click on the links above. So, what are you waiting for? Start clicking.

⏪ Friday, we were keeping an eye on Amex and Comerica earnings. Check out all the details above.

⏩ Today we’re keeping an eye on…

+ Verizon and Truist report before the bell

+ SAP, Nucor, and NXP drop earnings after the close

+ All eyes will be on the economic and market fallout of Biden dropping out of the 2024 Presidential race

For Summer Friday, I asked, “What’s the GOATed place to swim?”

An absolute landslide victory for in-ground pools as expected.

Here’s today’s question…

The perfect edit doesn’t exi—

You might have had a bad Friday but it definitely wasn’t as bad as the CEO of Crowdstrike’s…

Oh, and one more thing…

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