TOGETHER WITH
Hey there weekday warriors,
Here’s what’s on tap today… Amazon eats Walmart for breakfast, no one hates quite like Sam Altman, and Klarna may need to pay shareholders later.
Enjoy the next 3 minutes and 25 seconds of blue-chip news and commentary.
Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,
Fallmart
Brick and mortar is dead. Long live brick and mortar.
Walmart $WMT ( ▲ 0.75% ) dropped earnings for the first time under a new regime (reminder: CEO John Furner took over as the Waltons’ puppet on Feb. 1).
Wally World served up a top and bottom line beat (barely) but offered up a p*ss poor earnings outlook.
The good news? Holiday sales at Temu Target rose around 6%, thanks mostly to improved delivery times (read: copying Amazon’s business model).
The bad news?
Well, speaking of Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.6% )…
Andy Jassy & Co. just cucked Wally World, taking over as top dog in the retail league table for the first time ever.
Walmart’s annual revenue rang in at a mere $713.2B for 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon sold “a truckload more” ($716.9B). Still less than some people’s net worth… (sup, Elon).
So what’s Walmart’s last hope? AI, obviously.
WMT’s new CEO turned the AI hype up to 11 during his first earnings call. Turns out Walmart’s AI shopping assistant “Sparky” has been used by half of Walmart’s app users.
Oh, and Sparky gets customers to spend on average 35% more.
We can only imagine what kind of numbers Clippy would be putting up…
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+ Hear me out… a Sam Altman and Dario Amodei undercard for the Elon v. Zuck matchup at the Colosseum…
@sama and Dario Amodei pulled a reverse-Beatles yesterday (read: DON’T wanna hold your hand), and as you might expect with these two, it was super awkward…
The CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic (disrespectively) refused to take each other’s hands during a photo op at an AI summit in India. Although, to be fair, the whole concept of this picture is pretty cringe.
Obviously, the clip went super viral, given ChatGPT and Claude’s ongoing rivalry.
+ Tariff L.
The US trade deficit jumped to $70.3B in December, which is not great news for all you tariff stans. For the full year of 2025, ‘merica ran a $901.5B deficit, down only 0.2% from 2024.
+ Buy now, pay never.
Klarna $KLAR ( ▲ 9.36% ) just reported a net loss of $26M for the quarter… which doesn’t sound too bad until you consider the new kings of layaway posted a profit of $40M during the same period last year…
Revenue popped 38% to $1.08B, beating expectations. Oh, and the BNPL app wrapped up the quarter with 118M active users.
Surely, that was enough for shareholders, right? Right? Nope. Shares lost more than a quarter of their value on the day.
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> Famed director James Cameron sends scathing letter to antitrust lawmaker over Netflix-WBD deal (CNBC) // Spoiler: the king of the box office doesn’t like streamers.
> Trump Orders Release of UFO Government Files (WSJ) // *puts tinfoil hat on*
> New York Gov. Hochul drops robotaxi service proposal for outside NYC in blow to Waymo (CNBC) // Ouch town, population you.
> IKEA donates plush toys to viral baby monkey Punch — and you can get one for yourself for $20 (NY Post) // So was this monkey just an industry plant?
> Steve Cohen's $3.4 Billion Payday Tops Hedge Fund Ranks (Bloomberg) // Me looking for Nancy Pelosi…
> You might have had a bad day, but definitely not as bad as Blue Owl Capital investors…
Yesterday, I asked, “Surely, I'm not the only one following the story of Punch the baby macaque monkey, right? Made me wonder... which of these is the GOATed internet animal?”
60.4% of you said, “Harambe.” Everyone saw that coming…
Here’s what some of you guys had to say (and my response in italics)…
Harambe: “Long live the king.” Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.
Other (write-in): “Frankly, I’m offended that Peanut the squirrel didn’t make the main list, God rest its little soul. I think we can all agree that he was a martyr to freedom from government overreach. I’m not often aligned with PETA, but we stand as brothers (ok, and “sisters”) united on this matter, I’m sure.” Well, we already had another martyr on the list, so…
Pizza rat: “As a NYC resident, there's no other answer.”
Harambe: “I had a Patagonia tee “Dicks Out for Harambe” shirt. No regrets.” None?
Grumpy cat: “One of the O.G. memes, put some respect on his name.” Bring me back.
Here’s today’s question(s)…
You've just been hired as Sam Altman's Head of PR. Sam asks you, "Hey, when they go to all hold hands, should I hold Dario's hand?" What do you say? (And you better tell me why.)
+ US stocks “remained in negative territory at the close, as oil prices rallied on US-Iran tensions. The Dow Jones was down 0.5% at 49,395 points, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were both down 0.3% at 6,861 points and 22,682 points, respectively.” (Yahoo! Finance)
+ The 10-year yield was “relatively unchanged on Thursday as investors reacted to better-than-expected economic data and looked ahead to a key inflation report.” (CNBC)
+ Oil “rose around 2% on Thursday to settle at their highest level in six months, as traders worried about escalating tensions between the United States and Iran, which have stepped up military activity in the oil-producing Middle East.” (Reuters)
+ The “smart” money (prediction markets) thinks that there’s a 47% chance Pizza Hut gets acquired in 2026. (Polymarket)
⏪ Yesterday…
+ Walmart, Lemonade, Deere & Company, Etsy, Wayfair, Southern Company, and YETI Holdings reported before the opening bell
+ Opendoor Technologies, Copart, Newmont Goldcorp, Sprouts, Comfort Systems, Texas Roadhouse, Indie Semiconductor, and Dropbox reported after the bell
⏩ Today we’re keeping an eye on…
+ The core PCE price index report for January will drop
Oh, and one more thing…
What did you think about today's newsletter?
Sent from my Amazon Fire Phone. Please excuse any mistakes and typos.
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