Morning Brew Daily - Dow Jones’ Worst Streak in 46 Years & Taco Bell Serves…Chicken Nuggets?

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Episode 477: Neal and Toby discuss the Dow Jones Industrial Average’s historic 9-day losing streak, something that hadn’t occurred since the late 1970s. Should Wall Street be worried? Then, Trump settles with ABC News in a defamation case that could have ripple effects on how media outlets cover Trump. Also, a little-known startup announces a $10B financing round that puts it at a whopping $62B valuation, perhaps starting a new era in data analytics. Meanwhile, Taco Bell enters the fast-food chicken wars with a familiar favorite: chicken nuggets. Lastly, a roundup of headlines to end your day.  Build your Range Rover Sport at landroverusa.com Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow 00:00 - Intro  03:50 - Dow Jones Falling 09:00 - Defamation Cases 13:50 - Databricks startup  19:00 - Taco Bell Chicken Nuggets  23:50 - Headlines  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Bird Daily Show. Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the Dow is in its longest losing streak since 1978. So why aren't more people panicking? Then Taco Bell is a loco for pollo. It's adding a surprise new chicken dish to its menu this week. It's Wednesday, December 18th. Let's ride. Got a fun thought starter for you all this morning. Maybe it'll help you come to a deeper understanding of what makes you, you. So someone on Twitter posed the question, what are your personal foundational? foundational texts. You know, the books you keep coming back to, the ones that most represent your values and interests, and you can't fathom having a personal library without them. Toby, the people

want to know, what are your foundational texts? As part of this prompt, there was the question of these are books you revisit multiple times throughout your life, so that you've read at multiple times. And by that definition, the only foundational texts that I've read multiple times are mostly sci-fi or fantasy novels, the Aragon series growing up. I read multiple times. World War Z by Max Brooke is a book that I've read, is a book I've read three times, the Red Rising series. Most of these were books that I did read as a kid,

then you revisit as an adult. There's something just very cathartic about that. But, you know, if we expand the definition beyond just books, you've read multiple times, what are your foundational texts? Yeah, when I was thinking about this trumps, I was thinking the one that, like, most values, most represents me as a person and the one that is just like a base layer for me.

And I think when I was a kid, I would just look over the Atlas all the time. So I'm going with Atlas as my foundational text. I could just stare for maps at hours. I loved memorizing all of the countries of the world. So we're going with Atlas. If I have to pick a book with a little more words than maybe Bill Bryson's a walk in the woods. That's pretty solid. So travel, humor, all those themes I think represent me as a person.

I thought you were going to say Atlas shrugged at first. And I was like, wait, that's foundational to you. but an Atlas is just as good. That is too long of a book. Now a word from our sponsor, the Range Rover Sport. Neil, got a question for you. You are a road trip guy. Give me some of the elements you are looking for on the perfect road trip.

Well, I'm a journey guy, not a destination guy, so I need some long scenic roads where I can just toss it on cruise control and go. Some good classical music is always nice, but arguably the most important thing is a smooth and comfortable ride. The Range Rover Sport has all the bases cover. It's got adaptive off-road cruise control that monitors ground conditions and acclimates to your present terrain, as well as dynamic suspension that reduces unwanted body movements. I haven't had a good road trip in a few years, Toby, but this is making me want to get up and go.

Well, finish the pod first, then the open road is all yours. Explore the Range Rover Sport at landroverUSA.com. That's land roverUSA.com. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three burner gas grill, or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th, Exclusion supplies

to homedipo.com slash price match for details. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is one of the most well-known stock indexes in the world, and it just did something it hasn't done since Jimmy Carter was in office. Like Pep Guardiola's Manchester Cityside, things have been going decidedly downhill recently for the Dow. It is now finished in the Red for nine straight trading days, suffering its longest losing streak since 1978. To make matters worse, the Dow has been heading south while everyone else heads north. Both the broader S&P 500 index and the tech focus NASDAQ have notched record highs in the last week compared to a 3.5% decline for the Dow. What's dragging it down? Well, United Health Group is down 30% since the shooting of executive Brian Thompson, accounting for nearly 60% of the entire indexes drop.

Remember, the Dow is price-weighted, so the companies with a higher individual share price have a greater impact on the index as a whole. When one high-price stock, like United Health tanks, it brings the other 29 down with it. Still, more than two-thirds of the Dow Jones members have also fallen over the same period, so it's not just a one-company issue. Neil, as we enter into the last few weeks of the year with an important Fed meeting on the horizon, stocks are exhibiting some squirreliness. Still, this is, I would say, the chillest historic sell-off ever. What we've had, nine straight losing days for the Dow,

and overall it's down three and a half percent over that period. That is just not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But this is mostly a United Health story. It is down 30% since the shooting. So there's been greater scrutiny around health insurers. It's not just about the shooting, though. There is a push among Congress to force the large health companies like United Health, like CVS, to divest their pharmacy units in order to break up what they think is more of a monopoly

that these companies have. So it is mostly a United Health story, and I do want to home in on the fact that the Dow is generally considered a misleading index because of the fact that it's weighted by share price. I'm just looking at the companies that move the Dow the most, and it's Goldman Sachs number one, United Health, number two, Sherwin Williams, number six. So the paint company, we're not even close to getting to Amazon, Nvidia, or J.P. Morgan. So the paint company, Sherwin Williams, no offense to Sherman Williams, moves the Dow more than Amazon, Nvidia, or JP Morgan. So it is very skewed. And I think that's why investors are mostly brushing this off.

Right. It's more of a headline, like you get to say, longest losing streak since 1978. But it is almost opposite day as you go down the Dow because you have companies like Nvidia who have been actually stinking it up, recently a little bit. It's down 17% since it hit a record high in November 21st. Sherman Williams is down about 7%. That's a recent addition to the index. Meanwhile, Boeing has jumped 10% over that nine-day losing streak. It is actually the top performing stock in the index over that period as well. It is also the biggest loser if you zoom out to the year as a whole. So this nine-day period has just been a little funky where part of the reason why you see all the other indexes around it going up is that the magnificent seven, those tech focus companies,

have climbed about 8% in that same period, which is pushing the NASDAQ and the S&P 500 higher, but it is just a little bit of a weird time on the Dow, even though it is a technically a historical losing streak. Andy, he's this at the top, but there is a big Fed meeting today, which is certainly getting investors a little nervous. We're pretty sure, we're pretty much guaranteed that the Fed Jare Jerome Powell is going to cut rates for the third time this year. The big question, we're all going to be paying attention to this at the 230 press conference is what he signals for next year. As we've talked about on this show,

President-elect Trump's policies of tariffs, tax cuts, and mass deportations are expected to be inflationary, which could get Powell a little more cautious about Fed cuts through the next year. So we'll see how stocks respond to what he says about the future forecast of rate cuts. Right. It seems like right now Powell wants to put the car in neutral, not to go down another road trip analogy here, but the Fed might be taking its foot off the break after lowering this last final time to get to a more neutral interest rate that it's no longer restricting growth, but they also don't want to provide any additional growth stimulus either. So finding that equilibrium is something that Jerome Powell's comments

have indicated that he is more likely to do. That being said, the market does does forecast potentially three rate cuts next year, it just won't be front-loaded by any means. All right. So we're literally going to be talking about this 24 hours exactly from now with we'll give you an update on what Powell says. President-elect Trump escalated his legal war against the media yesterday, suing the Des Moines Register and Polster and Seltzer for election interference. Weeks before the election, Seltzer released an extremely surprising poll that showed Trump down three points to Kamala Harris in the state. He ended up winning by 13 points. Trump alleges a violation of the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which bans deception when advertising

or selling merchandise. The lawsuit comes on the heels of a major defamation settlement Trump agreed to with ABC News. On Saturday, ABC parent Disney agreed to pay $16 million toward his future presidential library after Trump sued over inaccurate comments made by top host George Stephanopoulos. When conducting an interview earlier this year, Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump was ruled liable for rape of the writer E. Jean Carroll when in actuality, Trump was held liable for sexual abuse. That ABC News settlement sent shockwaves across the media industry. Legal experts expected the network to win the challenge because defamation is such a high bar in the United States, which has the strongest protections for defendants of any country in the world.

So the fact that ABC would settle at this stage of the dispute was highly unusual and surprised a lot of people. And it sparked concerns among Trump critics that his relentless litigation against the news will allow him to silence or control the press. And this new challenge in Des Moines shows he's only emboldened. He's definitely emboldened. The surprising thing about the ABC settlement, which is, let's start there first, is that the constitutional standard in defamation cases is usually pretty defendant. friendly because, you know, in America we have very strong freedom of speech laws, rights literally enshrined in the Constitution. So a lot of people are like, whoa, why did ABC end up settling here? Part of the reason is we probably don't know why they settled, maybe something that they didn't

want to come out in discovery. They didn't want this to go in front of a jury, potentially some things said behind the scenes contributed to them settling. As for the Des Moines case, this is a non-traditional claim. Remember, it's not technically a libel suit. It is going against, they're saying Trump is trying to say that they violated Iowa Consumer Fraud Act, which prohibits deceptive ads. That one seems like it's less likely to succeed. But just in general, zooming out here, it is a bit, the word that has been tossed around by a few outlets is that it is a chilling kind of effect to go after these and use your intimidation power as the president-elect to go after these media organizations. And that's exactly what he wants to do. I mean, he knows he's probably not going to win this because the bar for defamation is so high. He would have to prove Stephanoplas acted in actual malice or with reckless disregard to the truth when he could have just been misspeaking. Like Stephanoplas would have had to be scheming with ABC News staffers in order to deliberately lie to the public about Trump. That is very hard to prove. But the point of this may not even be to win at all. Trump has sued many,

many major media companies in the past. He's lost pretty much all of them. The ABC News one is the only settlement that he's gotten. He's lost against CNN. He's lost against the New York Times. But in an interview with The Washington Post he gave, this was in reference to a previous lawsuit he filed against Tim O'Brien, who was a New York Times business reporter at the time.

He said he knew he couldn't win, but he brought it anyway to make a point. And this is a Trump quote, I spent a couple of bucks on legal fees, and they spent a whole lot more. I did it to make the reporter's life miserable. which I'm happy about. And the goal here may be just to drain media companies of resources, financial resources, by making them lawyer up and spend time and divert their attention away from actually covering it. And then the final, you know, aspect of this case is that trust in the media is at an all-time low. So maybe ABC didn't want to go in front of a jury because there have been

instances in the last decade where a jury has not been favorable to a media company. the, what I'm thinking of is in 2016, a Florida jury ordered Gawker, which was this online media publication, to pay Hulk Hogan more than $150 million in damages, which ended up bankrupting the media site. So maybe they just did a quick calculus here and say, we don't want to go down that road because juries have proven to be unfavorable in the past in cases similar to this one. Here's a tech startup you need to know about data bricks. Yesterday, the software company raised a staggering $10 billion funding round at a $6,000. $62 billion valuation, and some superlatives are in order.

That is likely the biggest venture capital fundraising ground of all time, and it cements Data Bricks as one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley. I never thought a startup would raise more than the $6 billion open AI received earlier this year, but here we are just a few months later. What does Data Bricks do? What if I told you it had something to do with AI? Yeah, shocking. Data Bricks tells software that allows.

big companies to sift through all the data they collect and use it to build AI models that help them run their businesses smoothie. For example, Walgreens is a client and they use Databricks to help them learn when to refill prescription inventory. Others use Databricks to predict when to offer promotions and to whom, while automakers like Rivian use the software to extend battery life of their vehicles. Only 11 years old, Databricks will soon do $3 billion in annualized revenue, is growing over 60% annually and is now flush with Cabbs. so much cash for growth and acquisitions. Toby, this is a company and management team executing at an elite level.

It is. And this is a chunky fundraise because, yeah, $10 billion largest in the history of venture capital. Looking into it a little bit more, some people actually think, actually Ghostie, who is the CEO of Databricks, said that a lot of these late stage investors, these big funds like Indreachian Horowitz, don't really have a ton of companies in which they can deploy their capital. There aren't that many companies that can, you know, even take attention. billion or even need a $10 billion funding round. The only names that he threw out were Databricks, Stripe, or maybe Open AI. So part of this could just be market conditions that these

funds need to deploy their capital. And Databricks is saying, all right, I guess we're the only ones on the table for it. But also, Databricks is doing very well. One of its big competitors is Snowflake kind of in the same data warehousing game in the data slicing and dicing game. And right now, their market caps, Snowflake is a public company, is, similar to Databricks, his new funding evaluation after this latest funding round. So I think that we're gearing up for a little bit of a data software war between these two companies. And people listening are probably like, wow, data bricks. Like this is growing like so fast. They have AI. I really want to invest. Well, the problem is they're not, maybe not going to

IPO anytime soon. And that's the point of this fundraise. They're going to use a lot of this money to provide liquidity to let their employees cash out, which is what an IPO would do. So they're being a little more patient for an IPO, Snowflake, as you mentioned, is a public company. Databricks now eclips their market cap, but is going to remain private for a little while longer. Maybe at some point they will IPO, and you can invest in this company, but for now they're staying private.

You can stay in private. And one thing about Databricks, again, it's a little hard to wrap your mind around unless you are a data, you know, engineer. But some of the quotes coming out of people who use it, one person, Dan DeBrikes, who is the chief product officer of Thread Up said, you can pry it out of my dead cold fingers. So it is one of those companies with a very fanatical following in the industry that it serves. So even if you are sitting here at home and say,

I don't know what Databricks does, talk to your data engineer friends. They'll know exactly what they do. Up next, Taco Bell gets nuggy with it. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save. more with digital coupons every week. Plus, you can earn fuel points to save up to $1 per gallon

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details. The newest way Taco Bell wants you to live moss is by getting into the chicken game. Starting Thursday, the chain is adding chicken nuggets to its menu for a limited time, but they aren't just any old nugs. They'll be marinated in a zesty jalapeno buttermilk and fried with a coating of tortilla chips mixed with breadcums for little Taco Bell twist on the fast food staple. While adding nugs might not seem to jive with the rest of Taco Bell's cuisine, adding chicken is most certainly in line with where

the fast food market as a whole is heading. As the cost of beef rises, more and our restaurant chains from McDonald's to Chipotle are relying on chicken to be its main growth driver. Taco Bell's former CEO, Mark King, said during an investor day last year that a large percentage of our business is beef, but the Gen Z consumer wants chicken. Neil, Nuggets are a dangerous category to enter into because incumbents like Chick-fil-A and McDonald's have their extremely loyal followers, but I think Taco Bell looked at where the industry winds were blowing and realized they'd be clucked if they didn't go for nuggets. I think there's one word that only matters here out of crispy chicken nuggets, and that is the word.

crispy. You love crispy. Because the texture of Taco Bell is largely one note. It's mostly beef slop or cheese slop or bean slop. I mean, that is the one-note texture of Taco Bell and people love it. But I think adding this crispy texture to their menu expands their universe a little bit. It is what consumers want. We're obviously going to talk about chicken, but I also think consumers want that

Chris. Chili Crisp is everywhere. This is the kind of texture. that consumers really want from fast food, from their food in general. So I think that really is the one word. And they make pains to show that they're going to do this very interesting breadcrumb situation around it. So I think that is one word we should pay attention to. I actually think you're dead right, too, because I read an eater article.

They did test out the new nuggets from Taco Bell. And they said they have a thick and craggy coating that's more akin to a raising canes than a Chick-fil-A. or a McDonald's or a Wendy's. They found the nuggets to be pleasantly juicy and crunchy. They didn't use the word exactly crispy, but they did love that breading. And I do think you're right. One thing, too, obviously chicken is very popular right now. McDonald's just rolled out the chicken Big Mac.

They are seeing a greater percentage of their sales come from chicken than ever before. But also, market research shows that Gen Z doesn't just like chicken. They specifically prefer boneless chicken and chicken tenders to traditional boneless wing. So I think there were two industry, you know, tailwinds here that Taco Bell was looking at. One, everybody loves chicken, but then two specifically younger customers love boneless chicken as well. Everyone loves chicken. I just want to provide some stats to back that up. Chicken products at fast food, quick service restaurants have increased 11% since 2019. That includes sandwiches, wings, nuggets, and strips. If you go back to 1970, we were a beef-loving nation, and the average person in the United

States, ate about 50 pounds of chicken each year. Today, that number has more than doubled, and this year we're expected to pass 100 pounds of chicken per person in the United States. So we've started, our love affair with chicken has really blossomed. And restaurants love this because chicken is a lot cheaper than beef. It's much easier to source. We read all these articles about sweet green when they put beef on steak on their menu. It was a nightmare from a supply chain perspective. It's not like, it's not the case with, with chickens. So everything is coming up chicken for fast food restaurants. Big questions for Taco Bells, is it compete, can it compete with the big guns in the chicken nugget market? And what the heck are going on

with these sauces? Because that is key. We need to talk about the sauce. I was going to ask your opinion on these. So it's offering, they want you to pair it with three new sauces. One is just the chain's signature bell sauce. Two is a jalapeno infused. honey mustard sauce, and then three is a spicy rants sauce that is concocted in collaboration with Hidden Valley. Of those three sauces, Neil, what are you ordering as your side dipping? Whenever they say signature dip, I'll go with that. The other two, I have to say, are not inspiring to me. Honey mustard, I mean, that became boring 20 years ago. And then a spicy ranch sauce sounds fine, but I'm looking for a little more innovation when it comes to dipping

sauces and apparently they tested over 100 sauces just to get to those three. So I'm a little disappointed with the options for the sauce to be on. We're in the wrong industry because I want to be the 100 sauce tester right there because I also have a lot of opinions on sauces. I actually disagree with you though. I think the spicy ranch is delicious because that is what I do at Chick-fil-A as I get one ranch, one buffalo and I mix them together. They just took that mixing step out of it for me. Now let's sprint to the finish with a few headlines you may have missed. The DC is getting serious about cracking down on junk fees. Yesterday, the commission passed a rule requiring ticket sellers, hotels, and short-term

rentals to show total prices up front, including all those annoying extra fees, so customers aren't caught off guard anymore when they check out. So no more finding the perfect weekend getaway only to get hit with a hefty resort fee or buying a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert, only to see the price rocket upwards at the end of the checkout process. Definitely not speaking from experience. there. This rule to push those hidden fees to the forefront of advertised prices is likely the final act in Joe Biden's war on junk fees, Neil. How's the war gone, by the way? It's gone okay.

I mean, they've tried to do a lot of things to get rid of junk fees or cap credit card fees, do things that make airline disclose baggage fees. You know, they've introduced those, but those have seen a lot of pushback from industry and there's been some setbacks in the courts and appeals court in New Orleans blocked a requirement that airlines disclose baggage and other fees up front. So that is currently in litigation. A judge in Texas blocked a rule that would cap credit card late fees. And an interesting point about this particular measure introduced yesterday was that there was one person on the commission. There's a commission of five at the FTC. One person who voted against this. And that is Andrew Ferguson, who is going to lead the FTC next

year. So a lot of question marks remain around this war on junk fees because it's happening. It just matters whether it will last in the next four years with President-elect Trump in charge. Honda in Nissan are reportedly exploring a merger and a cord that would create a $52 billion dollar Japanese auto giant that can better compete against Toyota and fast-growing Chinese EV makers. Nissan has went totally rogue this year. Shares have fallen 40 percent and its net earnings in the middle of 2024 were down more than 90% year over year. Honda's piloted the shifts in the auto industry a little bit better, but it still thinks it needs to scale up to better handle the transition to EVs. Combined, Honda, Nissan, and another Japanese automaker Mitsubishi

sold 4 million vehicles globally in the first half of the year compared to 5.2 million for Toyota by itself. Both Nissan and Honda were demure about a merger saying they were exploring various possibilities for future collaboration. Toby, talk about a sign of the times. I didn't know you knew so many Honda and Nissan models, Neil. That was impressive right there. One of the things you look at is what would either side get out of this potential partnership beyond just the obvious fact that you're combining growing scale a little bit. One potential partnership or benefit to Nissan is that Nissan needs a hybrid in their lineup. They need some help with that hybrid technology. That's something that Honda has really pioneered. And then on the

other side of things. Remember, even though Nissan has fallen a little bit in the EV race, Nissan was one of the first, the OGs of the EV. Remember the Nissan leaf? It had its growing pains. It didn't exactly set the world on fire, but Honda could probably get some EV technology out of this partnership as well. So those are two of potentially the synergies that they're looking at at this potential merger. Finally, a famous British cello player was forced to cancel a concert after the airline he was flying on didn't let his instrument on the plane. This wasn't any old cellist.

Sheku Kana Mason was a household name after performing at Prince Harry and Megan Markle's wedding. And this wasn't any old cello. Kana Mason's cello is worth about $3.1 million. But after his original flight was canceled, the gate agents on his rebooked Air Canada flight denied his cello from coming on,

citing a policy that says the extra seat for his instrument needed to be booked 48 hours in advance, Neil, as a former cellist, did this strike a chord with you? No, it did not strike any chord because I can't imagine having a cello that is valuable enough. First of all, to fly with, I would never need to go fly anywhere to perform with my cellar or anyone that needs its own seat. So this, I cannot resonate as a very, very, very amateur high school cellist with this story. But it is interesting when you think about the fact that this instrument is so critical to their profession and cannot be. And the way you transport it or store it is so important, so fragile.

This thing is $3.1 million was made in the year 1700. That is something you do not want to put on the bottom of an aircraft. So they're calling for a global regulation standard for taking cellos on a plane. And I think we need it. Right. this was not the first time it has happened to Kana Mason either. He has been very vocal about it. I never thought about transporting a cello because, yeah, obviously you can't check it because

it's so delicate. You can't put it in the overhead bin either, so it is one of those things where you have to just sit next to it on the plane. And I didn't even know that airlines even had policies related to it. Why would Air Canada have a 48-hour policy specifically relating to instruments traveling with you in the seat? I guess this isn't the first time they've dealt with it either, but just a whole different world that I've never even considered,

but now I'm kind of fired up about. But you take golf clubs on the plane, and you put them in a very airtight case to make sure. Toss them beneath the cargo hold. I mean, mine aren't $3.1 million. Let's just be clear. Let's wrap it up there. Thanks so much for spending your morning with us

and have a wonderful Wednesday. For any questions, comments, or feedback, send an email to MorningBrewdaily at morningbrew.com. And Toby, who should our listeners share the podcast with today? I want you to share the pod with someone you want to go try those Taco Bell nugs with. Neil and I will be venturing to our local Taco Bell come Thursday to give them a taste test. So share the podcast with someone who you want to accompany you because taste tests are always better with friends. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer.

Raymond Lou is our producer. Olivia Graham is our associate producer. Euchenua Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minito is on audio, hair and makeup is two chicken to come into work. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show, Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow.