Hey Snackers,
Think you had a busy December? Holiday fixture Trans-Siberian Orchestra reported doing 70 shows on their tour last month, sometimes doing four shows a day, to become the top grossing tour of the month by a long shot.
US stocks shrugged off Trump’s tariff pledge to finish higher yesterday, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 rising 0.5% apiece. Utilities were the best-performing S&P 500 sector ETF, but all sectors finished up on the day.
Apple’s AI phone utterly failed to drive sales
With the iPhone 16, the consumer electronics giant reimagined its signature product with artificial intelligence at its base, but apparently Apple’s AI phone wasn’t enough to drive a much-needed upgrade cycle. The company reported that its iPhone revenue declined nearly 1% to $69.1 billion in its all-important holiday quarter, and analysts had expected a 1.4% increase.Â
Apple Intelligence so far is not very good (some experiments have shown that Siri has gotten even less helpful with its advent) and perhaps consequently hasn’t caused people to buy the iPhone, which represents about half of Apple’s revenue.Â
On the bright side, Apple not really being considered an AI company has proved to be an asset amid this week’s AI tech rout, and Apple is again the world’s most valuable company. This hasn’t, however, protected the stock from a flurry of recent downgrades.
The Takeaway:
CEO Tim Cook told investors, “Today Apple is reporting our best quarter ever, with revenue of $124.3 billion, up 4% from a year ago” — a reminder that Apple is a lot more than iPhones and makes a ton of money from services, which drove that win for Cook. We may not get many “And one more thing,” big new moments, but Apple is still doing a lot of things it already does well and making a lot of money from it.
Invest in what you know
Spanning diverse industries such as technology, consumer services, healthcare, and industrials, the Nasdaq-100 Index® (NDX®) is composed of the 100 largest, most dynamic non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Known for its emphasis on innovation and market leadership, the index includes leaders shaping the future of their respective sectors.
While NDX is loaded with companies you’ve probably never heard of, like Analog Devices (ADI), Exelon Corp (EXC), and Paccar (PCAR), what may surprise you is the number of names in the index you do know. Names like: Apple (AAPL), Costco (COST), and Microsoft (MSFT).
Explore A Day in the Life of the Nasdaq-100 to see how the companies you know and love in your everyday life are driving growth and transformation in tomorrow’s economy.
How a health department led by RFK Jr. could throw the advertising industry into turmoil
If Kennedy gets past his confirmation hearings with the Senate, he could make radical changes to the Department of Health and Human Services. Even Trump has said Kennedy plans to “go wild,” though the US is starkly divided over whether the vaccine skeptic’s initiatives will actually improve public health.Â
Pharma ad shake-up ahead? One enormous change that Kennedy has proposed — to ban pharmaceutical ads — would fundamentally change the industry landscape to the tune of billions of advertising dollars.
TV marketing works. Since 1997, when the Food and Drug Administration loosened regulations and required companies to list only the major side effects of their drugs, TV ad spending by drug companies has ballooned. In 1997, 79,000 commercials for medicine were broadcast on US TV; by 2016, 663,000 ads were being broadcast.
The Takeaway:Â
While there’s contentious debate on RFK Jr.’s views on vaccines and other health issues, you won’t find a lot of consumers who love hearing a rapid-fire list of possible side effects for a new drug with a difficult-to-parse name. That said, the advertising and pharmaceutical industries have a lot of money at stake and will fight for any way to reach possible patients, so how this all shakes out is very much in the air.
Yesterday’s Big Daily Movers
IBM had its best day of the century after better-than-expected profits Wednesday night, gaining nearly 13% during the trading day.
Microsoft shares got hit hard after its cloud business posted underwhelming results.
Meta’s plan for 2025: hit a billion Meta AI users. Meta’s plan for 2026: monetize them.
What else we’re Snackin’
Cable giant Comcast reported wickedly disappointing earnings and had its biggest one-day drop since 2008.
On that note, it turns out Peacock remains flightless and bled $372 million last quarter.
Caterpillar, seen as an economic bellwether, inched downward amid a crummy outlook.
MoonPay, once known for connecting celebs and NFT apes, is now connecting crypto to Theo Von’s podcast and others.
Snack Fact of the Day
Tesla revealed that its bitcoin stash is worth $1.1 billion, and that bitcoin gains made up 25% of its Q4 net profit
Friday
PCE index (the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation)Â
Earnings expected from ExxonMobil, AbbVie, Chevron, Colgate-Palmolive, Charter Communications, Phillips 66, and Novartis
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