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Sweetgreen plummeted like it just gave JPMorgan’s entire intern class norovirus, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae might be gearing up for the biggest IPO ever, and Sam Altman defends GPT-5.

Enjoy the next 4 minutes and 35 seconds of blue-chip news and commentary.

Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,

– tyler

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We’re one more brutal quarter from getting Sydney Sweeney “Green Goddess” ads plastered all over major metropolitan areas…

The preferred salad shop of women trying to find a husband who’s “6'5", blue eyes, finance” got its teeth kicked on Friday. Sweetgreen $SG ( ▲ 2.18% ) lost nearly a quarter of its value after reporting earnings.

Not only did the home of the $37 salad miss on the top and bottom lines in the most recent quarter, but it lowered its guidance… for the second quarter in a row.

CEO Jonathan Neman called it a “really, really rough quarter.” Thank you, Captain Obvious.

WTF happened?

Maybe if SG spent as much time slinging overpriced rabbit food to middle management as it does workshopping excuses (that sound like ChatGPT hallucinations), it wouldn’t be in this mess…

For example, the company that sells fresh produce cited “tariff headwinds” as one of its major challenges, because apparently it’s importing those Parmesan-crusted croutons from Laos. It also blamed tough comps (it successfully launched steak in the same quarter last year). You can’t make this sh*t up.

Of course, there were some f*ck ups that were more of the self-inflicted variety. Like how it managed to piss off its ride or die consumers with a switch to its loyalty program. It appears management has never heard, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Oh, and its CEO admitted only 1/3 of its stores are meeting operational and satisfaction standards. *McKinsey has entered the chat*

And for his final trick, Jonathan Neman pointed to weak customer sentiment. Which, ok, fair.

This, of course, hints at a much more troubling pattern: overpriced lunch spots are being frequented less by the kinda people who have kept spending no matter what over the past few years. You might recall that Chipotle also recently reported headwinds and a drop in same-store sales, despite its loyal customer base being historically impervious to economic pressures.

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+ In the immortal words of Toby Keith: “Freddie Mac can kiss my ass…”

Bad news, Saudi Aramco, America is coming for the crown. You see, it appears that the US government is considering pulling off the biggest IPO of all time. The White House is kicking the tires on taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac public via an IPO that would raise ~$30B at a $500B valuation.

Perhaps you recall that Fannie and Freddie are wards of the state after getting bailed out in 2008. Since then, the government has tried to figure out what to do with the mortgage giants. Instead of doing literally anything, they’ve taken a page out of the Epstein list playbook and just kinda pretended the problem doesn’t exist.

+ "This is not financial advice." - Google Finance's AI bot after recommending that you YOLO into fartcoin

Google $GOOGL ( ▼ 0.41% ) Finance is implementing AI to help users research their most pressing financial questions (... like "how do I return a stock?"). And what could possibly go wrong?

+ Live look at all the Reddit users when Sam Altman hopped on for an AMA (Ask Me Anything)…

The GPT-5 haters were out in full force when Sam took a break from changing the course of human history to answer questions for a bunch of incels. Most of the questions were critiques of OpenAI’s newest model, followed by requests to bring back 4o. So much so that @sama said, “Fine, you f*cking tw*ts, we’ll bring back 4o, just you shut your godd*mn mouths” “We are looking into letting Plus users to continue to use 4o. We are trying to gather more data on the tradeoffs.”

He did admit that the rollout was bumpy, thanks mostly to a router switching issue that has since been fixed. What he didn’t address was the “chart crime of the century” (although he did call it a screwup on Twitter).

Turns out 69.1 is indeed more than 30.8, but none of the big brains over OpenAI checked their work before adding this slide to the deck presented at GPT-5’s launch…

+ Tradedesk $TTD ( ▲ 5.85% ) saw Sweetgreen’s $SG ( ▲ 2.18% ) day and went all “hold my beer.” The ad tech platform got put in a body bag on Friday, falling almost 40%… despite beating the Street’s expectations. The sudden departure of its CFO definitely raised some red flags, but TTD has a much bigger problem: Amazon. You see, Amazon is now directly competing with Tradedesk… and is doing a pretty damn good job at it. Not only is Amazon growing ad revenue through its on-platform marketing, it’s gobbling up market share on the open web (where Tradedesk plays). RIP in peace.

+ There’s a new memecoin in town. Gold futures hit an ATH on fears that gold bars are about to be hit with thicc US tariffs.

+ “Fake news.” - POTUS Lip Bu Tan

On Friday, Intel’s $INTC ( ▼ 2.77% ) CEO called the President’s claims that he had some explaining to do about his ties to China “misinformation.” And how did POTUS respond? By inviting the CEO to the White House today, for the business equivalent of getting called to the principal’s office in high school.

+ US stocks “rose on Friday, led by the tech sector, as the major averages ended the week with solid gains.” (CNBC)

+ The 10-year yield “moved higher Friday as investors weighed the effect of higher tariffs on the outlook for U.S. economic growth and inflation.” (CNBC)

+ Oil “held steady on Friday as markets awaited a meeting in coming days between Russian president Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump, but prices marked their steepest weekly losses since late June on a tariff-hit economic outlook.” (Reuters)

+ The “smart” money over in the prediction markets thinks there’s a 16% chance Perplexity will be acquired this year. (Kalshi)

⏪ On Friday…

+ Tempus AI, FuboTV, Terawulf, and Under Armour reported before the bell

⏩ Today we’re keeping an eye on…

+ Monday.com, Barrick Mining, and Rumble report before the bell

+ Oklo, Archer Aviation, Ast Spacemobile, BigBear, Plug Power, AMC, Microvast, and Fluence Energy report after the bell

+ Bullish is expected to price its IPO

Friday, I asked, “If you have to write a dollar sign ($) by hand, how many lines you putting through it?”

53.2% of you said, “2.”

Here’s what some of you guys had to say…

Here’s today’s question…

Turns out, dollar sign formatting gets you guys fired up. I would have bet my firstborn that “one line” would win in a landslide. Today, let’s tackle a question that probably has more to do with your industry…

Oh, and one more thing…

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.