Hey Snackers,
The US Census Bureau just released America’s most popular names for the first time since the 1990 Census. Based on 2020 Census data, Michael was the most popular name for men, climbing up from No. 4 back in 1990. For women, Mary was the top name in both censuses. Overall, American females had far more first-name diversity than male counterparts: 16% of US males had one of the top 10 most frequent names among men, compared with 7.8% of women. See if your name is on the list.
On Wednesday, the S&P 500 notched a new all-time closing high, topping the 7,000 level for the first time and continuing its four-session win streak. The Nasdaq 100 rose for the 11th consecutive session and also claimed a new record close, its first since last October.
Allbirds sold its sole for a pivot to AI
Yesterday, shares of onetime elder millennial footwear fave Allbirds went vertical following the company’s announcement that it is pivoting from shoes to, what else, AI, and has plans to change its name “NewBird AI.” The stock surged a staggering 582%.
That bonkers gain was the stock’s best day in the market since it went public, far eclipsing its previous best, when it gained 30% in one day in August of 2023. Even with the jump, the stock is still only trading around $20 a share. For comparison, on a split-adjusted basis, the stock was worth about $577 on its first day of trading back in 2021.
The company says it now has “a long-term vision to become a fully integrated GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) and AI-native cloud solutions provider.” (We agree, that level of corporate-speak is wild.) Allbirds is hoping that pivot can get it back to the $4 billion valuation it had when it went public, and that selling GPUs to tech executives will be a longer-lasting trend than selling semi-sustainable shoes to those same executives.
Allbirds’ move draws parallels to previous tech-focused pivots, like Long Island Iced Tea’s late 2017 shift from iced tea to the “exploration of and investment in opportunities that leverage the benefits of blockchain technology.” That move initially sent the stock surging, closing up more than 180%. The company was delisted a few months later, and some insider trading cases cropped up in the aftermath.
The Takeaway
If your fashion biz is past its prime, maybe investors will reward your pivot to AI, no matter how far-fetched it might seem. It’s certainly one way to try to survive after closing all your stores and selling everything you own for $39 million.
The HALO effect
For the better part of two decades, investors have given a skeptical eye to companies spending big money on long-term physical assets. Instead, the market wanted “asset-light” companies that boasted consistently higher profit margins over time and spent little on physical equipment. But now, with AI threatening to disrupt those types of companies, investors have been buying stocks they think AI can’t disrupt. That means companies with big physical assets.
Companies like oil field services firm Baker Hughes, tractor manufacturer John Deere, and shipping giant FedEx have all soared more than 20% this year. Other notable asset-heavy performers include CSX, Verizon, and Diamondback Energy.
Josh Brown, CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management and cohost of the markets podcast “The Compound,” coined a mnemonic that tries to capture the essence of what the market seems to be rewarding: HALO, which stands for “heavy assets, low obsolescence.”
“The more I was researching what was going on, the more obvious it became to me that this was the trade of the year,” Brown said. “All of the stocks that are susceptible to AI are shedding market cap and portfolio managers are allocating instead to companies that can’t be messed with by Anthropic and Gemini and ChatGPT.”
The Takeaway
AI has been hyped for years as the ultimate disruptor, and now we’re starting to see it wipe the floor with stocks you’ve heard of. It’s natural that investors would now be seeking out the corners of the market that seem safe from that destruction. Brown told Sherwood News that he thinks HALO is the “trade of the year” and that “the entire market is reorganizing itself.”
Lyft is building the infrastructure robotaxis can’t avoid
Lyft is leaning into a less flashy but increasingly essential part of the robotaxi race: everything but driving, by constructing an 80,000-square-foot Nashville warehouse that will service, charge, and maintain Google’s Waymo fleet. This marks a strategic split between Lyft and Uber, which has committed more than $10 billion to robotaxis, marking a massive move away from its asset-light roots. Lyft, by contrast, is focusing less on owning the cars and more on operating the systems around them.
Snacks Shots
🏒 Hockey: Tonight marks the final regular-season games of the 2025-26 NHL season, with the league gearing up for the playoffs. If you want to get eyes on the current favorite to win the Stanley Cup, they’re playing tonight, with the Colorado Avalanche (22% odds for the championship) finishing out their season against the Seattle Kraken.
*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.
What else we're Snackin'
Maine just became the first state to successfully pass a ban on large data centers
Snap may cut roughly 16% of its full-time employees in an attempt to improve profitability
The SEC gave the green light to remove a rule that prohibited traders from making four day trades over a five-day period if their margin account had less than $25,000 in it. Now, all traders regardless of account size will just need to have enough in their margin account to cover their exposure
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Snack Fact of the Day
Autonomous couriers (e.g., sidewalk robots and drones) could push delivery costs down to as little as $1 per order, according to Barclays.