Hey Snackers,
While we suppose it’s a useful service for our New York electricity provider, Con Ed, to send us weekly emails tracking our power use, we don’t love that the cost of our electric bills is always trending up. But we’re now grateful we don’t live near a data center, as a new report found that electricity prices in areas near those massive AI compute centers have gone up as much as 267% compared to five years ago. Now that’s shocking.
In a reversal of Monday’s session, the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 spent most of Tuesday in the red before powering higher in the final hours of trading to end near session highs and in positive territory.
The S&P 500 shook off the September scaries to sail 3.5% higher this month, its best September in 15 years, continuing its five-month streak of gains. In the third quarter, the benchmark index gained over 7%.
Automakers are working accounting magic to extend the EV tax credit beyond its deadline
The $7,500 EV tax credit expired yesterday, September 30. Logically, electric vehicle sales are now expected to fall off.
But some automakers, including Ford, GM, and luxury EV maker Lucid, have found ways to effectively extend the credit for some customers.
According to reporting by Reuters, Ford and GM have initiated plans to dealers that would have the automakers themselves put down payments on EVs currently in inventory at dealerships.
Those down payments would qualify for the expiring tax credit, and dealers would be able to extend the subsidy to future customers through discounted lease rates.
Reuters reports that the programs were launched following discussions between the automakers and the IRS.
Meanwhile, Tesla is selling a lot of Teslas. Like all EV makers, it’s been seeing lots of sales as would-be buyers pulled forward purchases to take advantage of the now expired incentive, and Tesla, for its part, has been leaning in by offering the biggest discounts of any EV maker and prominently advertising the end of the $7,500 credit to juice sales.
The Takeaway
This coming quarter is going to be extremely interesting for major automakers as they chart a path forward in the absence of the credit. Of course, a pull forward in demand necessarily eats into future demand, which could be stifled further by what might be a de facto $7,500 price increase. However the automakers manage to dull the impact of that blow is going to have a major effect on their balance sheets, and it remains to be seen exactly how interested people are in electric vehicles absent the incentive.
Americans still have hang-ups about using AI as a shopping assistant
Earlier this week, Sam Altman’s OpenAI announced that ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Free users can now buy Etsy products directly through the chatbot, meaning they won’t have to move to another tab after it tells them exactly which artisanal birthday gift captures the perfect balance of thoughtfulness and thrift while ensuring it can still be delivered in time for their friend’s party in three days.
So, will it catch on?
Investors in Etsy and Shopify — another platform that will soon benefit from ChatGPT’s new instant checkout feature — cheered the news, though Etsy gave back some of those gains by Tuesday.
One potential headwind? Some consumers, with various reservations about AI shopping assistants, may still take a little more persuading.
Per a YouGov survey published this summer, American adults have held back from using chatbots to help them shop for a number of reasons, from concerns about not getting the right information to preferring to enlist the help of a real person in the retail process.
Still, putting aside those hang-ups, the same polling found that many Americans have already been experimenting with using AI as personal shopping assistants — particularly younger generations. Indeed, 24% of Gen Z respondents said they’d already used the tech on a website, app, or other platform, while a further 20% said they’d be interested in using it going forward, suggesting that the true age of chatbot shopping could be just around the corner.
The Takeaway
What’s holding people back from using AI shopping assistants? Per the survey, 54% simply don’t see the need, another 34% are concerned about privacy or data security, and 30% think it would try to sell them things they don’t need. On that last point, let’s be real here: that’s probably why the retail stocks jumped in the first place, right? One consumer’s “thing they don’t need” is another retailer’s revenue, you know?
The Best Thing We Read Today
Betting stocks vs. prediction markets battle heats up
On Tuesday, Sherwood News Senior Markets Correspondent Matt Phillips noticed an odd thing: sports betting stocks like DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment (the parent company of FanDuel) were sharply falling on no apparent news. Was it a case of weekend matches having “customer-friendly” results? Not this time: it was a quiet entry to the arena by prediction markets platform Kalshi.
Yesterday's Big Daily Movers
Retail traders rushed into Wolfspeed
Firefly Aerospace plunged after disclosing it lost a rocket stage during a preflight test
Nio climbed following a 62% jump in weekly registrations in China
CoreWeave rallied on news that it signed a deal to provide up to $14.2 billion of compute to Meta
Get more details on the biggest movers of the day right when the market closes: subscribe to The Wrap here.
What Else We're Snackin'
OpenAI brought in $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of this year, 16% higher than its total 2024 revenue
What analysts expect from Tesla’s last quarter with the $7,500 EV tax credit
Meta is buying chip startup Rivos in an effort to lower its reliance on Nvidia
Denmark had to revise its GDP growth lower due to Novo Nordisk’s struggles
Snack Fact Of The Day
The process of developing a new plane can take more than 10 years.
Today's Events
Earnings expected from Conagra