Keep that Guinness tap flowing a wee bit longer.
The S&P 500 hit a 4-month high last week as investors look ahead to the Fed's upcoming policy meeting Wednesday.
Who's having fun...
Don't touch the couch... (it's technically not ours). Williams-Sonoma's West Elm brand partnered with Rent The Runway so you can rent a 2-year Chaise instead of buy one and awkwardly sell it on craigslist. RTR's showing West Elm the ropes on leasing out its mid-century mod chairs for your post-college 1-bedroom.
Hold the condiments... Fresh after announcing an embarrassing billion-dollar accounting error, Kraft Heinz is getting itself together. To start, it's putting its sour cream and cottage cheese biz on the market, and investors approve of the down-sizing of its old school food.
Define The Relationship... Germany's two biggest banks, Deutsche and Commerzbank, confirmed they're "in talks" about merging. But with the country's powerful labor unions and the Volk's concerns of merging #1 with #2, they're taking it slow.
...And who's having less fun
The California Walnut's expensive... The $33M that Lumber Liquidators has to pay in penalties is expensive-r. The wood-seller was fined heavily for buying Chinese floorboards that were treated with Formaldehyde, a known carcinogen (and CBS cracked the case Scooby Doo style with a simple factory visit).
S-3-X-Y... The team's now complete after Tesla unveiled its 4th eDriving option: Model Y. With more Americans splurging on bigger cars, the Y's size sits snugly between its Model X (SUV) and 3 (sedan). But investors weren't impressed with Elon's "underwhelming" infomercial-style unveil.
Bring in das lawyers... Just after revealing it's going carbon neutral by 2050, Volkswagen got sued by the USA. The guys and gals at the SEC claim VW execs knew as far back as 2007 that they its emissions readings were lies. And since V-dub leaders didn't tell investors, that's fraud.
More bad Facebook PR. Lots more.
Mom's upset you don't post on Facebook anymore?... Add that to the list of drama. Facebook shares fell 3% last week on bad news all up in its feed.
FB got swept in 4 games... by life. The social network's now more intertwined with society than the phone services it's made obsolete. That's why these problems have huge impact:
- People: One of the OG FB-ers not named Zuck is Chris Cox, and he was leading product there until stepping down Thursday. So did Chris Daniels, the head of WhatsApp.
- Technical: #FacebookDown happened Wednesday, as “Server" issues caused Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp to unapologetically stop working.
- Legal: Federal prosecutors sent out criminal investigators to see if Facebook broke laws by sharing user information inappropriately with over 150 tech companies.
- Societal: The mass murderer in New Zealand used Facebook to live broadcast his terrible acts.
The Situation Room's empty... Zuck's deputies aren't there anymore to help him fix all this. Cox led everything ("Product" is a catch-all word in tech referring to all the stuff a company does for customers). The WhatsApp founders were already gone, but now their sub's done, too. And the Insta guys are #Out.
What else we’re Snackin’
This Week
- Monday: Earnings from Overstock.com, Tilray
- Tuesday: Earnings from FedEx. 2-Day Fed policy meeting kicks off
- Wednesday: Earnings from General Mills, Guess
- Thursday: Earnings from Darden Restaurants (that's the Olive Garden owner) and Nike
- Friday: Earnings from Tiffany's