It's Official: Best Quarter Since '09

The Uber for drivers... Now with 39% of the ride-hail market (doubled from 2016), Lyft jumped 9% on its first-day trading Friday, raising its valuation to $27B. The co-founders (FYI, they own 5% of the shares, but 49% of the voting rights) rang the bell from a former car dealership in LA — Not NYC's Nasdaq stock exchange. It's a vehicular metaphor for its un-Uber strategy: Happy drivers = Happy riders. That lot will become a "Driver Center" for car repairs and tax support.

Man-leisurewear... First, it made yoga pants brunch-ready. Now, it's conquering the work wardrobe. For guys. Lululemon revealed 2018 was one of its strongest years, yet. Then shares soared 14% last week on the CEO's goal for gender parity in its sales (starting with stretch-khakis).

5G drama... America's worried that China's government can spy through Huawei's smartphones. Suspicion hasn't stopped it though — The Chinese telecom's profits jumped 25% last year to nearly $9B. Countries that aren't the US just want their 5G network future to come fast and at a low-cost, and Huawei's answering their calls.

Sleep in a box... Physical goods startups don't usually earn invites to the unicorn ranch. But Casper Sleep just joined all the $1B-valued apps with its latest fundraise, and we learned its sales are growing 60% per year. It even thinks 2019 will be its 1st year of profitability (and it's interviewing investment bankers to run its future IPO).

Pump the house music... Spotify dipped before the weekend on analyst concerns about Mom and Dad's music taste — American families want family plans ($14.99/month), not a bunch of individual ones ($9.99). That trend simply sounds less profitable for the music streamer.

Chaise, you've been demoted to chair... Restoration Hardware (AKA "RH") fell 22% because December's tough stock market psychologically affected its high-end furniture buyers. The CEO is confident though that his lavish plan to aggressively renovate and upgrade their mansion-sized stores (its NYC "Gallery" cost $50M to build) will fix "retail's lost decade." We dived into his unique strategy on our pod.

A really, really big poke... Facebook banned white "nationalist" and white "separatist" content last week (it's already been removing white "supremacy" content from the world's walls). But then the US government sued it for allegedly discriminatory housing ads. Now Zuck's asking Congress to write "new rules for the internet" so the social network doesn't have to.

Bundle my bundles... Apple splashed into gaming, premium news, and TV subscriptions for its biggest non-iPhone unveil yet. But shares ended the week down since it was so light on the how-much-will-this-cost-us-a-month details.

BBM is dead. Long live BlackBerry... The iPhone victim quit making its own smartphones in 2016. And on Friday, shares jumped after BlackBerry beat expectations with 9% quarterly sales growth. But it was words from the CEO that made the stock win: "We're done rebuilding. We're looking to invest."

The Batman of tech... Under new CEO John Chen, BlackBerry pivoted to become a "security company" — A watchful guardian for big business and government. It's designed cybersecurity services to stealthily protect your digital life:

• Your connected car: Blackberry's QNX software is there so that the tech-y features of your car are safe, secure, and actually work.
• Your money: It just dropped $1.4B for Cylance, a buzzword-packed, AI-powered, predictive analytics cybersecurity firm protecting financial institutions from hackers (ATMs = the front lines).
• Your connected home appliances: Later this year, BlackBerry's unveiling Spark, its major move into the internet-of-things. Its software connects household-anything with your phone's app-everything.

Living its best life... The S&P 500, a wide-ranging index of publicly traded companies, jumped 13.1% over the last 3 months — Cue the Best Quarter Since '09 and Best 1st Quarter Since '98 trophies. The thing is, markets still haven't climbed out of the brutal hole from the end of last year.

• Let's back up to the holidays: From October to December, the S&P 500 fell 20%. And it bottomed out on Christmas Eve on concerns of rising interest rates.
• It's been all up since: From December 26th through this past Friday, the S&P 500 has risen 20.5% (and the tech-packed Nasdaq's up a shocking 25%).
• Plus, fossil fuel's getting into it: Oil prices rose up 32% last quarter as the international oil-controlling cartel OPEC cut supply a tad, and sanctions hit Venezuela and Iran's production.

There are so many people I need to thank... Politics — including January's government shutdown, the US/China Trade War, and Brexit — isn't on the list. Neither is the US economy, which has been slowing down (America's 2018 GDP was just retouched downward). It was all markets:

1. Profits: They're the underlying driver of stock values, and they were still growing faster than the economy last quarter (Q1 earnings season starts soon, so we'll see if that continues).
2. The Fed: The central bank's December decision to raise interest rates bothered investors. But to encourage investors and businesses, the Fed hasn't changed them since. Markets applaud it.

• Work: 5 ways to get out of meetings you know will waste your time
• Life: How to make pizza without an oven
• Money: The simple calculator that does your taxes in 30 seconds
• Venture: Drake invests in eSports betting startup The Players' Lounge
• Crypto: A cryptocurrency gift card provider will now let you book Airbnbs with Bitcoin

• Monday: February's Retail Sales Report
• Tuesday: Earnings from Dave & Buster's
• Wednesday: US/China trade talks head to DC
• Thursday: Earnings from Corona-brewer Constellation Brands
• Friday: March's big Jobs Report

Disclosure: The author of this Snacks owns Lululemon shares.