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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:

Will investing in kids games finally make Netflix Games “the Netflix of games”?

Netflix is launching a game for preschoolers, its latest foray into stuff-you-play instead of stuff-you-watch.

Claire Yubin Oh6h

Max Knoblauch4/9/26

American Airlines joins the flock, hiking bag fees amid higher jet fuel prices

American Airlines on Thursday announced that it, too, will be hiking the fees it charges customers to check luggage.

With the move, all four of the major US airlines, which together control about 80% of the US market, have now hiked their baggage fees in recent days amid surging jet fuel prices.

The change will go into effect on tickets bought on or after Thursday, the same day Southwest’s hike begins.

Since late March, JetBlue, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Canada’s WestJet, and Southwest have hiked their fees. Experts expect more major carriers to follow, and to potentially tweak the pricing of other ancillary revenue sources like seat assignments and carry-on luggage.

American Airlines updates bag fees and Basic Economy fares

The change will go into effect on tickets bought on or after Thursday, the same day Southwest’s hike begins.

Max Knoblauch4/9/26

Less than a year after implementing them, Southwest is also hiking its bag fees

Southwest Airlines has joined the growing list of airlines opting to hike their bag fees amid sustained higher jet fuel costs.

Starting today, the first checked bag at the carrier — which implemented bag fees less than a year ago — will jump from $35 to $45, and the second from $45 to $55. Southwest quietly disclosed the change Tuesday.

Southwest assigned the decision to “part of an ongoing analysis of the business and against the evolving global backdrop.”

As of Wednesday, jet fuel prices dropped to $4.16 a gallon, per the Argus US Jet Fuel Index, down from $4.81 on Tuesday following President Trump’s ceasefire announcement, which sent travel stocks soaring. Major airlines have shed some of those gains in premarket trading Thursday.

With the move to hike bag fees, Southwest joins JetBlue, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and Canada’s WestJet, all of which also boosted fees this month. Experts expect more major carriers to follow, and to potentially tweak the pricing of other ancillary revenue sources like seat assignments and carry-on luggage.