🎉 Which would you take: Jordan, Game 6 or Chilis, Q2 2025 - I haven’t seen a food establishment’s promotion praised this much since McDonald’s celebrated Grimace’s birthday. The Triple Dipper led Chili’s to a quarter for the record books. A 31% increase in sales had analysts praising the restaurant chain as having “the best [turnaround] ever” in the restaurant business. Another analyst said Kevin Hochman, the president & CEO, would be writing a book about this some day.

✈️ Out of respect for this past week, I will not make any plane related jokes here, only facts; thoughts and prayers to the families in the DC crash -  $3.86 billion, that is how much Boeing lost in Q4 of 2024. To put that in perspective, a year prior, Boeing had lost $30 million in Q4. The company has lost north of $38 billion since 2020. I know you are supposed to analyze a company based on longer periods of time than quarter-by-quarter, but damn…they lost $14 billion in 2024 alone.

🥑 Eating an avocado toast as I write this before I can’t afford it - President Trump is officially not bluffing. His tariffs go into effect on Tuesday. 25% will be charged on goods coming from our neighbors up north and down south (Canada & Mexico), and 10% will be charged on goods from China. The tariff will likely be passed onto consumers and contribute to inflation, so enjoy your avocados and tequila before they cost a small fortune.

You thought Boeing’s loss was bad? Nvidia lost $589 billion in market cap in one day. To put that in perspective, that is the biggest drop in market capitalization value since March 2020 (aka when the world shut down from COVID).

Why did this happen?

Nvidia has become a household name and one of the world’s largest companies because of their bet early on in artificial intelligence. The company builds advanced semiconductor chips that are designed with an architecture that excels at handling the massive, simultaneous calculations required for machine learning.

In other words, they were seen as integral for AI advancement. They have been selling their semiconductor chips as fast as they can make them because of the demand for more computing power, but DeepSeek, a Chinese AI company, unveiled a model that rivals or exceeds OpenAI's with a fraction of the computing power. As such, if models can be built with less computing power, then the need for more chips drops and Nvidia suffers as a result.

What is DeepSeek?

DeepSeek is a Chinese AI company, which launched an AI model that rivals OpenAI's. One major difference between DeepSeek and OpenAI: DeepSeek built their model on a $5.6 million budget, whereas OpenAI has been taking billions in funding.

Why did they build with less advanced chips?

Due to an effort by the US government to slow China’s AI advances, in fall 2022, DC banned Nvidia from selling any more A100s chips to China, as chips were becoming scarce worldwide. As such, DeepSeek had to rely on chips purchased in bulk in 2021, and the company relied on 2,000 or so of Nvidia’s less advanced H800 chips.

Why is there controversy?

Export controls circumvention - On Friday, US officials began a probe into whether DeepSeek may have bought chips through 3rd parties to circumvent the 2022 export controls.  

OpenAI investigates - OpenAI is investigating whether DeepSeek inappropriately trained its groundbreaking model on OpenAI’s ChatGPT model.

The $5.6 million might be BS - If you think the $5.6 million number is too good to be true, it is because it might be. The research firm Semianalysis estimated that DeepSeek may have actually spent closer to $1.3 billion.

What happens next?

When a new player enters the market and disrupts in the way DeepSeek has, there is bound to be spillover and controversy. While the amount spent on the model may be off, the company has built a model that rivals ChatGPT. The AI arms race is well under way, and wherever there is this level of competition, the water might get choppy.

On Wednesday, J Powell made like Aragorn in Lord of the Rings and held. Where are my Lord of the Rings fans out there?

Jokes aside, after three consecutive interest rate cuts imposed by the Fed over the final months of 2024, the Fed decided to hold interest rates steady at their current level.

Why is this somewhat controversial?

The hold comes just days after President Trump called on the central bank to lower them. President Trump has been a proponent of the President having a say on whether or not to cut interest rates, but the Fed is independent from the executive and other branches for a reason.

What is the Fed’s role?

The Fed has a dual mandate - employment and inflation. They are in charge of making sure the employment rate and inflation rate are at healthy levels to further sustainable growth in the US economy.

The Fed uses interest rates as a primary lever to achieve their goals.

When the Fed needs to slow down the economy, they raise interest rates. When money becomes more expensive to borrow, people are less likely to borrow, and the economy slows down. In theory, with higher interest rates, less goods and services are purchased by consumers, and companies have less money to spend on growth.

When the Fed needs to speed up the economy, they cut interest rates. When money becomes less expensive to borrow, people are more likely to borrow, and the economy speeds up. In theory, with lower interest rates, more goods and services are purchased by consumers, and companies have more money to spend on growth.

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• What’s wrong Charlie Brown? Consumer confidence, that’s what. The consumer confidence report came in, and amidst the high inflation and views on the labor market, consumer confidence in the US economy is dropping.
• “Built Ford Tough” has a different meaning as the auto company issues a recall of more than 270k Broncos and Mavericks.
• Everyone seems to be moving to Texas, including Meta. The tech conglomerate has been exploring a move of their incorporation from Delaware to Texas. This is different from their HQ, which would stay in California.

Much to the pleasure of those around me, I couldn’t shut up about this one. As humans, we have collectively agreed on certain imaginary parameters to help us convey & innovate. A company is nothing more than an imaginary collective of people moving towards a unified goal. The goal in itself is also made up. We surpassed other species when we learned to communicate in the early days to hunt wooly mammoths.

Everything read cannot be unread, and I was captured from page 1. The thought provoking explorations created the path to understanding how it is we arrived as the apex species and why we remain there.

⭐ 4.81 / 5.0 in my book (no pun intended)

1. “Mayonnaise-colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips”
2. “Do Business with the people the US Government can't”
3. "All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt"

Paul Giamatti’s dad, Bart Giamatti, was the 7th commissioner of baseball. Due to a sudden heart attack, he is the shortest-tenured baseball commissioner in the sport’s history at 5 months.

1. Last Call (Kanye West)
2. War Dogs (Jonah Hill)
3. Charlie Brown