Vonetta Logan’s weekly recap of the big business, news, markets, political, cultural and viral trending stories featured this week on Daily Dose
What’s up tastynation? Welcome to this week’s edition of Weekly Dose!
Each week, I recap the top stories that I covered on Daily Dose. If you missed any episodes of Daily Dose you can catch up on them here.
We all got an extra day on the calendar this year, and I hope you guys were able to capitalize on your Leap Day.
I, for one, took advantage of the day by proposing marriage to every single man I ran into. I like to call it the “spray and pray” approach to nuptials. My success rate is 0%. See ya in four years dudes!
Let’s get to this week’s recap.
Bitcoin becomes iconic
What a week to be a digital asset. Bitcoin (BTC) started the week strong ripping through the $54,000 level for the first time since December of 2021.
The Bitcoin surge also lifted bitcoin-adjacent companies like Coinbase (COIN) and Microstrategy (MSTR). Microstrategy’s crypto stake now tops $11 billion. I would love to sit in on those business development meetings:
- Buy bitcoin
- ???
- PROFIT
Coinbase also saw its stock get very active this week. In fact, on a day when Bitcoin continued to set new highs, many Coinbase users reported seeing their accounts reflect a balance of $0.
Bitcoin dropped by about $2,800 as reports of the outage surfaced. Coinbase has since corrected the issue. In other interesting news, online brokerage Webull filed to go public via SPAC this week. But as a condition of the listing, it had to jettison all crypto exposure.
Bankman-Fried in court and other crypto news
Famed crypto fraudster, Sam Bankman-Fried is due for sentencing March 28 and he faces multiple decades in a penitentiary. This week, his legal team implored a judge to give him just 5.5 years because he’s just a wittle baby and prison is too harsh for him. He gave it 1 star on Yelp.
In other news, crypto asset manager Grayscale, is seeking to get options approved for its spot Bitcoin ETF.
Bitcoin’s monthly gain for February is 47%. But in sobering news, advanced digital asset thievery teams have netted more than $75 billion in so-called “pig butchering” scams, which is way more than was previously estimated.
I implore all of you to watch the Last Week Tonight piece from John Oliver on the details of these scams. So scary!
AI, AI, whoa!
This was a very good week to tell the Street that most of your company is being run by robots.
We started the week with this theoretical matchup: Jerome vs. Jensen. If investors had to pick, would they choose to bet on the Fed and its Chair, Jerome Powell? Or, should we all be YOLO’ing options into Nvidia (NVDA) and back its leather-clad bad boy boss, Jensen Huang?
Well, the answer seems to be Nvidia. Nearly $3 billion in options premium trades in Nvidia every day.
Micron (MU) just had to put out a press release saying that Nvidia said hi to them at a party and its stock also surged this week. In reality, Micron will now be making chips for use in Nvidia’s semiconductors.
The geniuses over at Bank of America (BAC) think that AI is actually underpriced in the options market. FTC Chair Lina Khan entered the chat this week as she reminded us that Nvidia once harbored a desire to merge with Arm (ARM).
While she gets to keep her job, Klarna says that the use of AI in customer service bots has replaced the effort of 700 formerly employed people. Cool!
The original AI, well at least in terms of ticker names, C3.ai (AI), reported earnings this week. The company crushed it.
Dell (DELL) also reported earnings this week and all the company had to say on its call were the magical words: AI servers. That stock, which no one has thought about since the “Dude, you’re gettin’ a Dell” days popped on the news.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) also continues to rise, as the stock, once ranked 222nd out of the S&P 500 in terms of size, is now ranked 22nd. We love a glow up.
Microsoft (MSFT) also announced a new integration of its Copilot AI into its Outlook and Excel products. Oh goody! Companies can now destroy their entire balance sheets with just a few keystrokes.
I hope Microsoft enables Clippy. “It looks like you’re trying to embezzle some funds. Would you like help with that?”
And in the craziest AI story of the week, Alibaba (BABA) announced the development of its new video AI engine called EMO, emote portrait live. As an elderly millennial, I am here for anything EMO, but this video is amazing and scary at the same time.
Companies behaving badly
I have a hodgepodge of stories left to cover, so I’m throwing them all under this general catchall of corporate shenanigans.
Up first, United Airlines (UAL) joins American Airlines (AAL) in raising bag fees for checked bags. Because Lord knows the airlines aren’t quite nickel-and-diming us enough.
In other aviation shenanigan news, Boeing (BA) now has 90 days to either get its act together or to marry a random woman from Uzbekistan.
The FTC is calling foul on the potential mega grocer merger of Kroger (KR) and Albertsons (ACI).
But if you are headed to the store, the CEO of Kellogg’s (K) went on national television this week and urged Americans struggling with rising food costs to make like a college student and just eat cereal for dinner.
In other food misstep news, former internet darling, Wendy’s (WEN) leaked news that it was thinking of instituting Uber (UBER)-like surge pricing at its restaurants. The fast-food chain were promptly roasted by the internet and quickly reversed course.
In other WTF corporate news
Apple (AAPL) announced it will cancel plans for an EV Apple car. The project, codenamed Project Titan, is being scrapped after 10 years.
Disney (DIS) announced that getting to the happiest place on Earth will cost you a bit more in 2025.
Finally, the Queen of Daytime TV, Oprah, stepped down from the board of Weight Watchers (WW) this week due it being a huge conflict of interest. Winfrey is on a GLP-1 drug for weight loss while the rest of the mere mortals are still trying to choke down the cardboard-dry Weight Watchers meals.
Random chicanery
These are my favorite funny stories of the week
- Willy Wonka world goes wrong
- Sopranos booth up for auction
- Tech worker gets married wearing Apple Vision (I will still die alone)
- Will Tom Eat It? Crispy egg salad
That’s it for this week! See ya next week!
Vonetta Logan has more than a decade of markets experience and has been a trader for five years. She is an on-air personality, creative writer and news correspondent at tastylive. Vonetta appears Monday-Friday on Daily Dose and contributes to Luckbox Magazine. @vonettalogan
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