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Starbucks (SBUX) and the $800 million pumpkin spice frenzy
Pumpkin spice everything has made an early comeback this year as companies are eager to get their piece of the million dollar pie well ahead of fall.
US stocks finished lower Thursday heading into Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s highly-anticipated speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium
• NVIDIA (NVDA) reported better-than-expected results after the closing bell Wednesday and gave upbeat guidance for the quarter ahead. The company’s shares reached an all-time high before ending the day more or less flat. Demand for NVIDIA’s chips has surged in lockstep with the popularity of AI-driven technology; the company expects this demand to continue through 2024.
• Hugging Face, an AI firm based in New York, just raised $235 million from some of the biggest tech players, including Google (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Nvidia, Salesforce (CRM), AMD (AMD), Intel (INTC), IBM (IBM), and Qualcomm (QCOM), bringing the company’s valuation to $4.5 billion. Hugging Face creates tools for artificial intelligence developers to share and test their work openly, similar in spirit to GitHub for programming.
• Durable goods orders fell more than expected with a 5.2% decline in July, marking the sharpest decrease since April 2020. That said, the drop came after a surprisingly strong June. In both months orders for transport equipment were key.
What to be on the lookout for today
• Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will speak at the Jackson Hole Symposium. Investors will be eager for more insight into the central bank’s stance on interest rates for the remainder of the year.
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Today’s top stories
A showdown between a union, automakers, the Biden Admin has the EV transition stuck in neutral Will the electric vehicle boom come at the cost of well-paid union jobs? Read more >> A Schwarzenegger protein bar that fuels your brain as well as your body Maria Shriver and her son Patrick Schwarzenegger just raised $3 million to help bring their healthy snack brand to 1,800 retail locations. The startup already has racked up 100,000 customers and $10 million in sales. Read more >> Streaming services are getting more expensive. Here are helpful ways to save Don’t let your favorite TV show blow out your budget with these 13 ways to save money on streaming services. Read more >>Not-so-breaking news
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Fast-fashion brands Shein and Forever 21 are joining forces, with each company taking a minority stake in the other. This deal will help each retailer find new ways to reach customers.
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Roark Capital is buying the Subway sandwich chain, ending five decades of family ownership. The deal is reportedly worth $9.6 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
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Revised data from the Labor Department show that the US created 306,000 fewer jobs than initially reported between March 2022 and March 2023. Even so, the US economy still added 3.7 million jobs during this period, outpacing pre-pandemic levels.
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CNN (WBD) will soon be available on Warner Brother’s Discovery Max streaming service. This service will launch on September 27th and serve as a 24/7 live-news hub.
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NVIDIA announced blockbuster earnings, showing that the AI rally still has legs. The chipmaker has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of generative AI applications, which all rely almost solely on NVIDIA’s graphics processors.
Financial planner tip of the day
“When making a decision about how to build a portfolio, you may want to keep in mind that risk and reward are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other.”
Brian Walsh, CFP® at SoFi