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Year in Rearview

Our favorite charts of 2024

A visual look back on the year.

12/24/24 9:14AM

Well, it was a year. And judging from Sherwood’s many charts, it was an interesting and eventful one. Before we begin 2025, I asked Sherwood writers to choose their favorites. Here are a selection of charts we made this year that are really important, really clever, or just really well liked by us. Some are simple line charts, while others are satellite images or in-depth interactives. All will hopefully make you look smart to your relatives this holiday season.

Forget the Magnificent 7: We coined the BATMMAAN stocks:

Donald Trump won the presidential election — and so did a federal immigration contractor and private-prison company:

Reddit is only the latest social-media company having its day in the sun:

A Short History Of Social Media Hype — Sherwood News

The nation’s electric-vehicle charging goals are a long way off:

The Line Rider tries to stick the Fed’s soft landing:

Unemployment Insurance Initial Claims

Turns out, our food-shopping preferences are very regional:

America’s supermarket mapped social — Sherwood News

It’s tough to be Elon Musk’s neighbor. Look what he did to an adjacent property in Texas:

The insatiable appetite for AI:

Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta spent billions on artificial intelligence.

You were right: Meta’s Threads timeline was totally chaotic. We checked:

Hollywood ran low on new ideas:

How Sweetgreen charged $15 for salad and still lost money:

Jeans didn't go out of style, but the style certainly has changed:

OpenAI is worth... a lot of other companies:

Streaming has changed a lot about music, including the length of songs:

What an investment in Berkshire Hathaway actually includes:

What do you get if you buy $1,000 of Berkshire Hathaway — Sherwood News

Where did all the stocks go? Big tech ate a lot of little tech:

Friends are the new spouses when it comes to buying a home:

The pandemic darlings aren’t looking so hot:

This year you hedged your stocks with stocks, not bonds:

Chinese yields are signaling a depression:

Max Knoblauch2/20/26

Microsoft makes dramatic shake-up to its gaming division as gaming CEO Phil Spencer and Xbox President Sarah Bond depart

Microsoft’s gaming division underwent a major shake-up on Friday, as the tech giant announced the departure of gaming CEO Phil Spencer, who led the division for 12 years and championed its Game Pass subscription service.

Xbox President Sarah Bond is also out, according to Spencer’s memo to employees.

Xbox has fallen significantly behind rivals Sony and Nintendo in recent years. Microsoft raised Xbox console prices twice last year and bumped subscription fees up 50%. In November, the console was even outsold (in unit sales) by the motion-controlled Nex Playground console.

The pair have overseen a shift at Xbox from standard consoles to an array of consoles, handhelds, and various devices and screens accessed via cloud gaming.

Spencer’s replacement as the head of gaming is Microsoft’s president of CoreAI product, Asha Sharma. In a memo to staff, Sharma made three commitments: great games, the “return of Xbox,” and to “invent new business models and new ways to play.”

Xbox chief Phil Spencer is leaving Microsoft

The pair have overseen a shift at Xbox from standard consoles to an array of consoles, handhelds, and various devices and screens accessed via cloud gaming.

Max Knoblauch2/20/26

Judge rejects Tesla’s attempt to overturn $243 million verdict over fatal 2019 autopilot crash

Tesla’s effort to appeal a $243 million jury verdict related to a fatal 2019 crash that occurred when a Tesla vehicle was in self-driving mode was rejected by a federal judge in a ruling made public on Friday.

Tesla is expected to appeal the decision to a higher court.

The case was the first federal lawsuit surrounding an autopilot death to go to a jury trial for Tesla. In August, a jury found the automaker 33% responsible for the 2019 crash. The jury determined that Tesla was partly to blame for enabling the driver to take his eyes off the road, and the company was ordered to pay an additional $200 million in punitive damages.

Tesla reportedly turned down a $60 million settlement offer prior to the trial. According to Electrek, dozens of similar cases involving the EV maker are working through the court system.

This month, Tesla stopped using the term “autopilot” in its marketing in order to avoid a sales ban in California. Tesla appears to have replaced the term with “Traffic Aware Cruise Control” and added “supervised” to its mentions of Full Self-Driving tech.

US judge upholds $243 million verdict against Tesla over fatal Autopilot crash

Tesla reportedly turned down a $60 million settlement offer prior to the trial. According to Electrek, dozens of similar cases involving the EV maker are working through the court system.

Hyunsoo Rim

serial reseller

2/20/26

Etsy sells fashion app Depop to eBay, as the pair’s postpandemic paths split further

The $1.2 billion clothes reseller is the last shoe to drop in Etsy’s failed “House of Brands” experiment.

Etsy NYC headquarters building, December

Max Knoblauch2/17/26

Sony is reportedly considering pushing the PlayStation 6 to 2028 or 2029 as AI RAM demand squeezes consumer electronics

AI’s ongoing need for more memory chips, which some are referring to as “RAMmageddon,” is reportedly shifting Sony’s plans for its next PlayStation console.

According to reporting by Bloomberg, the company is weighing a delay of the PS6 to 2028 or 2029 — a pivot from the company’s typical six- to seven-year console life cycle.

Memory costs could also result in Nintendo hiking the price of the Switch 2, per the report.

The report is part of a larger trend of AI demand impacting consumer electronics, including gaming equipment. Earlier this month, reports said that Nvidia will not release a new gaming graphics chip this year — a first. Steam owner Valve delayed its forthcoming Steam Machine console, and its popular Steam Deck handheld is currently unavailable for purchase in the US. Per Valve’s website: “Steam Deck OLED may be out-of-stock intermittently in some regions due to memory and storage shortages.”

Amid the AI memory squeeze, gaming stocks have also experienced major recent sell-offs following the release of Google’s AI interactive world-generation tool, Project Genie.

Rampant AI Demand for Memory Is Fueling a Growing Chip Crisis

Memory costs could also result in Nintendo hiking the price of the Switch 2, per the report.

Amid the AI memory squeeze, gaming stocks have also experienced major recent sell-offs following the release of Google’s AI interactive world-generation tool, Project Genie.

Hyunsoo Rim

REMOTE. CONTROL.

2/17/26

Younger companies and leaders embrace more remote work, new study finds

Firms founded in the past decade have nearly twice the WFH rates of those started before 1990.