Single Days Sales, Nvidia Stock in Focus, CPI Report & More

Vonetta Logan's 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 eps of Daily Dose you can catch up on them here. 

Where are all my turkey preppers? Ha! Wouldn’t that be funny if your turkey had a bug-out bag? To be fair, turkeys probably do prefer living alone in the woods free from government and kitchen interference.

Anyhoo, my Thanksgiving prep is going well, and by well, I mean texting my parents all my extremely specific ingredient requirements before I start cooking. I’m super fun!

The recap is still gonna look a little different this week because you can’t test something after just one time. 

Let’s get to this week’s recap. 

Nothing could be fina, let’s talk about China

Tons of news related to China came across this week. To start off, Chinese and China-linked retailers like JD.com (JD), Temu—part of PDD Holdings (PDD)—Alibaba (BABA) and others disclosed some of the sales figures for their Singles Day Promotions. I am all for allowing single people a day to reap copious discounts in the hopes that material possessions will fill the aching void of loneliness that—oooh! Are those sheets on sale? 

Meanwhile, all eyes were on San Francisco and its strangely clean streets as the city hosted the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. It seems the talks proved fruitful. U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping have agreed to resume high-level military communication, according to both countries.

America’s business titans also got a chance to speak with President Xi at a dinner where he hoped to lure foreign investors to the world's second-largest economy. There are still issues between the two countries, especially as rhetoric surrounding computer chip manufacturing escalates. China has, however, managed to create the fastest internet in the world. I guess that’s impressive, but I’m pretty sure China's internet has only like 100 accessible, state-approved websites. 

Nvidia (NVDA) is riding a red-hot streak this week, but it has also felt the sting of canceled China orders. The outlook also wasn’t so rosy for Applied Materials (AMAT), which disclosed it is under a criminal probe for shipments to China. Alibaba (BABA) also had a bad end to the week after aspirations for a cloud spin-off went up in smoke. Intel (INTC) said good luck with all that, and its stock hit its highest level in 17 months after it was upgraded. 

CPI causes chaos 

The once-innocuous consumer price index (CPI) report, which tracks the prices on a broad basket of consumer goods, has become an agent of chaos for the market. The CPI was flat in October from the previous month but increased 3.2% from a year ago. Both were below Wall Street estimates, sparking a major rally on Wall Street. 

We also got a ton of earnings reports from the retail sector this week. Home Depot (HD), Walmart (WMT) and Target (TGT) all issued warnings about how skittish consumers were going to be in the upcoming holiday season. 

The biggest retail shock of the week goes to Amazon (AMZN) for sneakily announcing you will be able to buy a Hyundai on the e-commerce site starting next year. That was not good news for other online car dealers like Carvana (CVNA) and CarMax (KMX). I hope that car comes with a free “The Club.” Because Hyundais are still in Grand Theft Auto mode and all the kids have the cheat code. I drunk-shop on Amazon all the time. I hope I don’t accidentally order a Hyundai. 

Way to Musk it up, buddy 

I have never been to business school—Journalizm 4 lyfe! But I imagine that pretty early in CEO 101 they just write on the whiteboard that Nazis are bad for business. Yet, inexplicably, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA) and owner of X, formerly Twitter, keeps making decisions that boggle the mind. 

Social media sites are all facing the pressure to moderate the very intense language posted to their sites in the wake of the war in Israel and Gaza. It seems, however, that X is trying to take the path of "the hottest take wins." Spoiler alert: it is not going well. 

Earlier this week, Musk replied to a post that accused Jewish groups of "hatred against whites," calling it the "actual truth." The backlash to Musk’s comments was swift and immediate. International Business Machines (IBM) yanked all of its advertisements from the site. It appears ads from Apple (AAPL), Oracle (ORCL) and Xfinity (CMCSA) were all shown next to posts literally touting Hitler. Double Yikes. 

Tesla investor Ross Gerber tweeted “this is a win for Rivian … I will be replacing my Tesla model Y for a Rivian next year and I’m sure the rest of LA will as well.” You can see more condemnation of Musk here. But it really does speak to the larger issue. What does this blatant and shocking rhetoric mean for the rest of Musk’s businesses? 

Earlier this week Musk announced his SpaceX linked satellite company Starlink had secured yet another lucrative contract with the Mexican government. He also hushed growing rumors that Starlink was going to file for IPO in 2024. SpaceX’s Super-Heavy Starship also generated its own positive headlines this week as the rocket that could eventually carry astronauts to the moon is set for another test launch this weekend. 

Musk has positive PR circulating, but because of some weird inherent fetish to be “very online” all the time, all that goodwill is in jeopardy. Investors, board members, employees, shareholders, consumers, vendors, distributors, etc. all are affected by the callous nature of the comments Musk makes. It’s like he has a sign in his office that reads: "It’s been 0 days since my last racist statement."

Earlier in the week it was reported that Walter Issacson’s book about Musk could be adapted into a biopic directed by award-winning director Darren Arnofsky. This seems like a project that will soon be DOA. What executive in Hollywood wants to greenlight this now? 

Musk and Tesla are set to have an event at the Gigafactory in Texas surrounding the initial delivery of the Cybertruck. If Musk must face the press for the event, let us all be forewarned. I can’t wait for the business school case studies on the stunning trajectory of Musk’s career. 

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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