Morning Brew Daily - The Summer of Spending Thanks to Taylor Swift, Beyonce & Barbenheimer

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

Episode 139: Happy Labor Day! Neal and Toby recap the biggest stories of the summer, including how the economy was impacted by Taylor Swift, Beyonce and Barbenheimer. They also explain how the past couple months of extreme weather altered the national and global markets. Plus, the guys quiz each other on which companies did the best and worst, and who said what? Finally predictions for the rest of the year. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here: https://link.chtbl.com/MBD Watch Morning Brew Daily Here: https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Freyman. And I'm Toby Howell. On today's special holiday podcast, Toby and I will recap summer 2023 by presenting the one story that we thought defined the past few months. We'll also go over some of our most embarrassing flubs because who would want to forget those. Then we'll look ahead to the next half of the year to see what's on the horizon before finishing up with some predictions that we will 100% get correct and won't come back to bite us at all. It's Monday, September 4th. Let's ride.

Happy Labor Day. Hope you're able to avoid doing any labor today besides making a massive pancake breakfast or shopping for sweaters online. Because of the holiday, today's Morning Brew Daily episode will be different than usual. Labor Day is considered the unofficial end of summer,

so Toby and I are going to discuss the new stories that define the summer and preview the rest of the year. Plus, we're going to quiz each other because we are hopelessly competitive about trivia. Hope you enjoy and lets you reminisce about all the good times we had together, because winter is coming.

Okay, to start things off, Toby and I are going to pick the one story that we think define summer 2023 and present our case. And I will go first. The story that I think defined summer 2023, and I don't think anyone is going to be particularly surprised by it, is what I call Barbay Opinielor. That's the term I coined for the phenomenon of watching Barbie and Oppenheimer in theaters, seeing Taylor Swift and Beyonce in concert, and catching a Lionel Messi game for Interim. Miami. First of all, if anyone did all five of those, please let me know because that is extremely

impressive, and you probably have a private jet I could hitch a ride on. Anyways, the reason I think these five cultural events are so important is because they reveal a lot about the psyche of the American consumer in our first real summer after the pandemic. During COVID, people couldn't choose to buy experiences because we were all at home, so we loaded up on physical goods to renovate our houses, learn a new hobby like pickleball, and buy fancy toys for our new pets. All this buying of stuff drove inflation to levels we hadn't seen in decades. But this summer was maybe the first new normal summer, and it looks a lot like the old normal of 2019. People spend more at experiences like concerts, movies, and sporting events.

They ate out more and they traveled internationally, all things that were trending up before the pandemic. Meanwhile, Americans stopped buying so much stuff at Home Depot and Dix, as we learned in these companies disappointing earnings reports recently. Of course, there are a lot more threads to pull out here. But no doubt these superstars commanded our attention and our dollars this summer. What do you think about things like Taylor Swift and Barbenheimer? What do they mean to you? Okay, two things stood out for me. By the way, thank you for pulling all those threads together, Neil.

That was artfully done. But to me, first, we have to remember what the outlook, economic outlook going into the summer was. Remember, pretty much every major economist at a major bank said that we were going to enter a recession. Rates were going to be simply too high and was going to constrain economic activity far too much. And then all of a sudden, every single month, we're like, okay, we haven't gotten into recession yet, but next month for sure, next month for sure. And it was because we just like kept spending our way through it all. And one of the big things I think that was underestimated was just the sheer power of women as an economic force. First of all, they're constantly underestimated as an economic force.

And this was the summer that everyone finally woke up to the fact. I mean, even the Fed's Bage book, which is kind of their commentary on the economy that they publish eight times a year, called out Taylor Swift for boosting Philadelphia's hotel industry. Barbie is the biggest movie in Warner Bros. History. This was truly just the year of the summer of the woman, basically, and just them exerting their economic power and everyone becoming aware of it for the first time. And the thing is, they went in groups, too. It wasn't kind of a solo endeavor.

So more than 80% of people who bought tickets to see Taylor Swift and Beyonce, say they purchased more than two tickets to those tours. So you saw like these groups come together and really, you know, flex their economic muscle. And just overall, the sheer economic power of these cultural forces like Barbenheimer and Taylor Swift and stuff, you see them actually coming into GDP data. So over the summer, all this spending, I think it's going to amount to $8.5 billion in total on those two tours and the two movies are going to add 0.5 percent to GDP. So maybe one of the reasons that we're able to avoid this recession that you talked about is because of these concerts and these movies and these cultural events. Yeah, you just can't forecast that as an economist.

Like, you can't forecast that we'll have two of the biggest tours of all time. I guess you could, but it truly did blow people out of the water. And then also just to put a bow tie on this whole experience over physical goods thing, we did see a huge increase in travel as well. Remember, especially travel to Europe was really hot at the beginning of the summer. Kayak reported that searches for European travel were 77% higher than last year. Hopper said that of anyone who was browsing for international destinations, 30% were searching four flights to Europe. And then passport demand, if you remember, in March, was 30 to 40% higher than last year's levels. So it was all these things where people were just finally ready to fly the coup, get away from the mainland, get over to Europe, and travel.

is just a huge part of this massive economic summer as well. Final point I want to make is what drives the experience economy is FOMO. And I think when you see Barbenheimer go viral on social media and messy, every single goal messy scores, you know, you see it populate your feed. I think that's like, oh, I got to go and, you know, get in on this experience. So I think this virality on social media also drove a lot of the spending that we saw. Okay, Neil, my story of the summer. is extreme weather and climate change.

I feel like this summer talking about the weather went from small talk to big talk really fast. I'm just going to run through all the extreme weather events that we've been tracking. First of all, this is an El Nino year, which researchers at Dartmouth estimated could cost the global economy as much as $3.4 trillion over the next five years. And we've already started to see its effects. We've seen historically hot ocean temperatures, a buoy in Manatee Bay, Florida, reported an ocean temp of 101 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the highest ever recorded. And that has also led to historically hot air temperature as well.

Starting on July 3rd, Earth reached its hottest day ever, a record four days in a row. In fact, things got so hot over in Europe that they actually named a heat wave for the first time, Cerberus, which is the three-headed dog from Greek mythology. There's also been droughts that have notably affected the Panama Canal, dropping its water to dangerously low levels and threatening to disrupt the global shipping industry and droughts combined with the heat I mentioned have made this also the summer of wildfires. I'll never forget the few days when New York City had the worst air quality on earth as wildfire smoke from Canada drifted our way and turned everything into a Blade Runner movie. You know, I could keep going, but holy moly,

it was a heck of the year. What stood out to me, though, was for the first time in a while, it seems like we were coming to terms with the real world effects of climate change. And I've seen more buzz around renewable energy EVs, etc. than ever before. Yeah, especially because it was the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered $500 billion in incentives for clean energy projects. So you saw a lot of those get going, too. So on the one hand, you saw, yeah, we couldn't see each other because there were so much haze in New York and we were all coughing. And then on the other hand, you saw a lot of energy projects, clean energy projects get going like offshore wind farms and chip plants. That's not exactly clean energy. But that's part of the

the equation and EV plants and battery plants get going. So you saw kind of two sides of the same coin and you're wondering if the, you know, the latter half, the clean energy part can catch up to what we all experience this summer. But I think it's just going to be a structural change now. Like people may not be able to visit southern Europe as much because there's going to be constant heat waves there and that's going to change tourism and tourism towards northern Europe. And supply chains are going to be affected all over because of climate. You mentioned Panama Canal getting so low. And that's been a storyline over the past few summers is rivers getting way too low for ships to traverse them. And gas prices was another thing that ticked up.

And that was fueled by, no pun intended. Refinaries not being able to produce as much because they were idled by heat. So it's all of these sort of more permanent changes that I think we're going to all have to deal with that kind of became visible this summer. I remember when we talked about El Nino right at the beginning of the summer and we saw that $3.4 trillion number. And we kind of just like laugh to yourself because how can you really estimate the economic effects of a weather event? And then we just saw all these different ways that's impacting the economy directly right now. And this was for five years. I feel like it's an underestimate at this point. I mean, also another angle of this was the insurance angle where it's just becoming untenable

in some places. Insurers are backing out of California and Florida due to just way too high disaster risks. Farmers, all state, state farm all have begun to withdraw because their exposure to extreme weather events is just too high to be profitable for them. So we're seeing real, real economic effects from things like the weather. And, I mean, this was only one summer. Like, it's just going to keep on going from there. Okay, Neil, let's move on to our next segment. This one I'm calling our first summer as podcasters because it was.

Morning Brew Daily is still just six months old. And like any six month old, we've had our fair share of gaffes, misspeaks, and mistakes. Whatever you want to call them, we've done them. And most of the time, it's you guys are listeners who catch them. So to have a little fun, Neil and I are going to revisit some of our more infamous MBD messups from the past few months. Neil, this is a safe space. What do you want to get off your chest?

Here's what I want to get off my chest. Invidia. Apparently, sometimes they say Navidia instead of invidia, which is this tech giant that also is a story of its own for being a leader in the AI space and its stock. is up, you know, 230% this year. But a few U-Tube commenters pointed out that in one podcast, I said six invidias compared to four invidias. Or, no videos. Four nividias. You can't even pronounce it wrong now. And then another person said, when I say nivitia, it gives me an aneurism. Okay, so that's my one mistake. That's one of the flubs that I have. Another is I got called out by

so many of my friends for saying banal instead of banal. So I'll never get either of those wrong again, even though I just got in video wrong again. Neil, I'm not going to lie, those are pretty small compared to what I have coming. Go ahead. So here are my gaps that I want to address. First came from a story where we were talking about the brands that War Capital, the PE firm that bought Subway owns, and I brought up Culvers. Now, I love Culvers, incredible cheese curds, incredible burgers, but I mistakenly said that they also have incredible ice cream. That would, my fatal mistake. Culver's has custard, not ice cream.

There's a difference. I looked it up. The main difference is the addition of egg yolks to custard. They give it a richer, creamier, thicker texture. So shout out Jeremy Miller and Angel Tello for calling me out on that one. My next one is that I called the World Health Organization

the WHO instead of the WHO. So Neil thought that was a crazy move to call it the Who, and we had a debate about it on the show. And I did get some listener support from the YouTube comment section as well as in our inbox. So Lauren Matthews was on your side. She said, it's for sure the WHO, not the WHO. But then YouTube commenter Kalido Frio said, yes, you can call it the WHO. Toby was right. Wait, based on what

authority? Okay, wait, I'm getting there. And then finally, but Mark Kusha said, those of us in the profession slash global health industry call it who or WHO. So truly we were both right in the end, even though we had a nice laugh about it on the show. Am I validated in that or no? No. I'm not giving that to you. Who is like a, first of all, it's abandoned. It's a very common word. You can't have an acronym that's also a common word.

It gets confusing. Yes, you can. You can literally, as long as you put the in front of it, it's not calling it's the who. I don't know. I don't want to get into it again. I'm just going to say that I'm validated on that one. Okay, and then the final thing that has emerged over the summer

is something that I call the Inverbalm. versus Toby, where basically whenever I predict something, the opposite comes true. For instance, I said that the U.S. would win the Women's World Cup. They lost in the quarterfinals. I said Trinity Robin would be the breakout player of the tournament. She didn't score a single goal. I said Nigeria was my new team of destiny after the U.S. loss. They lost immediately after I said that to England. Even outside of sports, I predicted who would have the biggest box office halls between Barbie Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible? I said Mission Impossible would win by far. was the smallest by far. So Neil, if I predict anything on this pod, immediately go bet on the

opposite thing. All right, well, we're going to do some predictions later in the show, so we'll be able to put that to the test. The inverse toby is alive and well. All right, before we jump into our next story, which is a little quiz off between Neil and I, we're going to take a quick break. 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. 3-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 homebore.com

slash price match for details. Not loving your AT&T or T Mobile bill? Yeah, we've been hearing that a lot. Good news. Bring your AT&T or T mobile bill to Verizon and we'll give you a better deal. So get away from that unfortunate phone bill and get to Verizon. Run, ride, canoe. Whatever it takes, we'll be here. Bring your AT&T or T mobile bill to a Verizon store today and we'll give you a better deal on the best network. A better deal. No surprises.

That's Verizon. Best network based on root metrics, best overall mobile network from the U.S. second half 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person who gave me the deal. Additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. We're back with one of our favorite pastimes trivia. Toby and I have each prepared a different quiz for each other

about the summer and we definitely encourage you all to play along and also make fun of us when we get something wrong. So Toby, I think you're going first. You're quizzing me. All right. So for anyone who listens to the show, we have a segment called Stock of the Week, Dog a Week, every Friday. And even though we are just humble podcasters and not financial advisors, we do keep tab on what's going on in the market. So I want to give you a quick market quiz, Neil, to see just how well you know your equities, baby. So first question, Can you name the top five best performing stocks of the year in the S&P 500? All right.

Number one, NVIDIA, number two, meta. Crap. Number three. Just let me know whenever you want hits. Like maybe like Warner Brothers or something. I'm just trying to think about something that was really far down last year. So I'll go Warner Brothers. Probably another tech name.

Amazon's too big. Palantier maybe. And let's go with Morning Brew. Morning Brew is up the most. You are on the right track. So you got Nvidia. That's up 228%. You got Meta, too, which was impressive,

up 142%. Just crazy. Okay, the third one is a car company. Tesla? Tesla is up 117% this year. And then the last two are travel companies. So you were correct and you're thinking of something that was... Expedia?

booking? Not air travel, not ground travel. What's another type of travel? Oh, Carnival. Carnival is the fifth best performing, 94%. And then Norwegian number four. I'll give it to you. It's Royal Caribbean.

So you're on the right way. 98%. So you... We talked about those. Yes, you were totally directionally correct in thinking, all right, what was really down and what's up this year? So the cruise lines. I didn't know that they were top five best performing.

Yeah, it's that experience economy we're talking about. Exactly, yeah. So well done on that, Neil. I actually thought meta would be a tricky one, but you nailed that one. Okay, so we did the best performing stocks. Now I want to go to the worst performing stocks. So the two worst performing stocks in the S&P 500 this year were N-Face Energy, which is down 52%

and Solar Edge Technologies, which is down 43%. But can you name the third worst performing stock of the year? And I would only ask this if it was a company that we have talked about on Stock the Week, dog the week. Dude, I blackout during that time. I know. It's a vague question, but let's go on the same thought. I mean, energy, I know, like, oil prices have been down compared to last year they were way up.

And they've moderated. So Exxon or Chevron. I would think pandemic rather than energy. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Pandemic rather than energy. So I have three. I have three hands. Pelotan is already so far down.

I don't think it could go down even more. It's not Peloton. Zoom, I think, is coming back. What else? Like maybe, oh, the cleaner company, Clorox. No, Clorox is already down. Here's a hint. It was the second best performing stock of 2020.

Do you remember what the second best was? I don't. The top was Tesla. Okay, and the third hint is it starts with an E. E. And it's not ExxonMobil. What's the industry? Commerce.

Etsy. Etsy is down 38%. So that is the third worst performing stock in the S&P 500. It was one of our dog of the week, so we can certainly pick them, Neil. All right. Our third question is, of the top 10, biggest companies in the world, six are tech companies. Can you name the four that aren't? All right. Berkshire Hathaway. Nice. That's number eight. Definitely a pharma company now. Let's try

Eli Lilly. Number 10. Okay. Let's try Johnson and Johnson. Not Johnson. Visa. This is biggest companies in the world. Oh, in the world. Not just America. Aramco? Aramco, number three. Saudi Aramco, the oil giant. Then we have LVMA. Nova Nordisk. No, it's no more. You've already said this this company in our in our quiz. Invidia. Not Nvidia. That's a tech company. It's not a tech company.

Although it does, it is kind of a tech company. It's an automobile company. Tesla? Tesla. Number seven. So Saudi Ramco is third. Tesla is 7. Eight is Berkshire Hathaway and number 10 was Eli Lilly.

I thought Eli Lilly would be hard for you, but you immediately nailed that. Yeah. Well done. Well done. Oh, you give me a lot of credit. I've got a lot of stuff wrong. You did better than I expected, honestly. All right.

My turn for you. here we go. So my quiz is called Name that quote, or really, or it's more like, name the person who said the quote. I will read a quote from the Summers News and you'll have to tell me the name of the person who said it, okay? Okay. First one, I recognize everything

I've said in the past. I recognize people will call me a hypocrite. Anytime I've said anything, I've said it with the information I had. Oh my gosh. I recognize this thing. Wait, wait, wait. Give me like a little hint. Give me a little hint. I totally know It's in the sports world.

Oh, it's Jay Monaghan, the PGA commissioner. So he said this after the merger between LiveGolf and the PGA tour, and everyone kind of got on his case about it. Yes. There is a huge infusion from Saudi Arabia that they basically bought the sport of golf earlier this summer. Okay, next quote, send me location. Oh, it's Elon, right? Or send me, is it for the fight between Elon and Zuck?

Zuck. Zuck. So, Zach. Yes, Mark Zuckerberg on Instagram challenged Elon Musk to a fight to a cage match that was rumored back and forth for the past few months.

Seems like that's not going to happen and we kind of knew that all along. But for the first week, it was fun. And then it just kind of dragged on. It was the lack of punctual or like proper grammar that got me. I'm like, that's got to be Elon, but send me location.

That was. Send me location was Mark Zuckerberg. Okay, here's the other one. I've made 33 dives. I've actually calculated that I've spent more time on the ship. than the captain. James Cameron for the diving to the Titanic.

So that was director James Cameron. He was everywhere on doing so many interviews after the submersible, the Titan submersible imploded, killing all five people on board on its way down to the Titanic. So that was, you remember that was a huge story earlier this summer. Okay. Our fourth quote, there was a delicious mushroom dish.

I was not aware that these mushrooms had hallucinogenic properties. That was Janet Yellen on her trip to China, right? She had a magic mushroom without knowing it. She just like me, for real. All right. Our final quote, I think you're four for four for four, maybe with a little hand. Yeah, three and a half for four. Three and a half for four.

Baby Grunk just stole Livy from the drip king. Just whoever that guy on TikTok was who did that news story in the millennial voice. Yeah, so this was a TikTok user, Henry Detola, who unleashed a series of truly bad. Faffling videos about Livy Dunn, the LSU gymnast, and a kid named Baby Gronk that left a lot of people feeling like they no longer speak the language of the youth. That was crazy because even us, even me, who speaks for the youths was like, all right, this is a step too far. This is too much internet for the day.

But, God, we've talked about a lot of stuff on this show, Neil. Let's move on to our next segment. While summer is basically over, we still have four months of the year left. So Toby and I are going to run down some major events and storylines to look out for until will we go in for a smooch on New Year's Eve? Not Toby and I, just universally speaking, but people kiss on New Year's Eve. Anyway, Toby, go ahead with our first storyline.

I think we're going to focus on the tech industry first. What to look out for. So what's on the docket is Apple's next event, Wanderlust, is coming up. And the big news is that the iPhone 15 is probably going to drop. And the big news on that iPhone drop is that it's going to have a USBC charging port. Neil is fist pumping right now. So Apple chargers will no longer be the special butterfly that they are,

and it's finally falling in line with the rest of the world. Honestly, I'm excited for it at this point, too. Like, let's just get on the USB seat bandwagon. People come over my house, and they're like, can I have an iPhone charger? And I'm like, I don't have one. But now they will be. So thank you, the EU, for pushing that. What I'm looking out for in the tech world is there's an end of the era

because Netflix is officially closing shop on its DVD service on September 29. Crazy that they estimate that between 1.1 and 1.3 million people still subscribe to DVD rentals. Such good memories of it. I'm going to try to snagling because that's going to be a historic artifact one of these days. Let's move on to markets in the economy. The thing I'm looking out for is all these IPOs that could happen. Obviously, the IPO market has been absolutely silent over the past 18 months. It's starting to wake up with Kava. And then we had Instacart just recently filing its S-1. So it's planning on going. public. Arm, the soft bank-owned chip designer is also planning to go public, which could be probably the biggest one of the year. And then I'm also looking forward to Birkenstock, which could go

public at an $8 billion valuation. And we'll see it go. It's just always going to be compared to Crocs on the market. Yeah, Croc. That could be, it's like Crock andheimer, Bergen Croc is going to be the winter story of choice. Okay, Neil, I am looking forward to how AI is going to affect the market going forward. So remember, if we're going to look in the in the, in the review mirror, Nvidia has just been absolutely riding the AI wave. So we'll see if Nvidia can keep the momentum going after it reached a trillion dollar market cap. Also, the demise of Google's search business was greatly exaggerated.

And in fact, it's rolling out more AI features than ever just as quickly as anyone else. And then also can Bing, which is Microsoft search engine, keep any of that momentum, it captured going forward. So we'll see how kind of big tech and AI interact going forward. The SMP 500 is up about 17% so far this year. So a nice rebound from last year. I'm wondering if we can make it 20% by the end of the year, but we'll see it has a lot to do with maybe Jerome Powell's interest rate hikes,

which we can talk about a little bit later. If Etsy could get his stuff to the other, maybe it can get to 20%. It needs to be more like Carnival. Yeah. All right, let's go on to sports. What are you looking out for in sports? Okay, so the Ryder Cup starts at the end of September in Rome. so I'll definitely be tuning into that,

where we'll actually have some mingling of Live and PGA tour players, which was definitely unexpected given where we started the year in terms of the two tours. We'll also see if the Saudi-backed live tour does end up merging with the PGA tour, as has been announced. Since that's been announced, we haven't really seen

any information come out. So even though they say it's going to happen, I'm definitely going to be looking forward to it if it actually combines and merges. And then obviously we'll be keeping an eye on Messi to see if Inter Miami will ever lose. again. He's part of the experience economy at this point. And I say that they make the playoffs and that they win the whole damn thing. They're just never going to lose again. He's got that. Maybe not.

Then they were terrible. I know. I think I'm looking out for is the first ever F1 race in Vegas. It's coming to the Vegas strip in November. It might be the biggest party of the year. It's also going to require a logistics miracle. $560 million is going to be spent to get Vegas ready for the race, which the project manager called one of the most aggressive programs of construction and design I've seen. So they do street races in Monaco and Singapore, but transforming the Vegas strip, it's already very trafficy. There's a lot of people there, and they have to get it ready for an F1 race. And it's in Vegas. First F1 race there, F1's getting big here during the pandemic.

So I think it's going to be nuts. I don't know if there's a Raiders game as well or a Vegas Golden Knights game, but this could break a Taylor Swift record for, you know, hotel occupancy and spending for a single weekend in a place. I can't wait to see what they light the sphere up as. Remember we talked about the Vegas sphere. I hope they do something crazy with it during the F1 race. All right.

Finally, entertainment. What are you looking out for? What movies do you want to see later? We have some great movies in the pipeline, Killers of the Flower Moon, the Martin Scorsese, Leonaro DiCaprio film. We, of course, have dumb money coming out, which is the GameStop movie that we're doing a screening for.

in just a week actually, so come hang out with us. We're not getting Dune 2, which was pushed to 2024 because of the Hollywood actor strike. And then some rapid fire names that are also coming out, Saw 10. I can't believe we're on 10 movies of that. Captain Marvel 2, Timothy, Salamis, Willie Wonka, and then Napoleon, which one of those are you most excited about? Killers of the Flower Moon and Napoleon. I'm a sucker for just like the big historical drama.

So that's really what I'm going to look out for. Obviously, this might be the last real movie season that we have, unless this strike gets resolved, because everything's going haywire. The fall TV schedule is all messed up. I'm waiting for severance to come back. But, yeah, the TV is all kind of messed up. There's not going to be SNL. There's not going to be late night.

So the writer's strike is definitely messing with a bunch of fall TV schedules. Go listen to podcasts. Go listen to podcasts. I'm looking forward to two different books. One is the SBF book by Michael Lewis. uh, which should be super interesting. And then the Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson. So I guess that's pretty basic. Like, oh, you're a, you're a bro and you're looking forward to all these, these books about business. But I think they'll be really interesting. Uh, the Walter

Isaacson, a book about Steve Jobs. I found really, really good. And kind of was my first introduction to business. Okay. As the final part of our fall preview, Toby and I are going to look into our crystal ball and offer up some predictions for the rest of 2023. I've, run down five prompts that I'll read off and will make some uneducated guesses, then revisit them at the end of the year. All right, the first one, the Fed has raised interest rates to 22-year highs, and recently in Jackson Hole, Jerome Powell said he may not be done raising them. Investors seem to think that he won't, though. So Toby, will we see another interest rate hike this year? I'm going to say no, because Jerome has, first of all, gotten so lucky with the

Barbenheimer thing, with the Taylor Swift thing. I think he realized he has this very delicate house of cards that he's built up, the economy is in this Goldilocks mode. I just don't think he wants to throw a wrench into it at all. And so he's going to keep them where they're at. I'm also going to say no. I think there's, you know, they like to say the Fed is insulated from political pressure, but there is, I think, an increased amount of pressure on Jerome Powell to not raise rates anymore because those are being blamed in part for the regional banking collapse earlier this year. So I think that inflation is going to continue come down and he won't raise interest rates anymore. So we're both, I put us down both for no on that. Okay. So probably's

going to raise them. Inversely. All right. The second one is about the Hollywood actors and writer strike. Toby, my question to you is, will either one of those be resolved by Thanksgiving? I'm going to say yes, because I just think that the financial pressure that a lot of the actors and writers are under is just going to become eventually too much because, I mean, there's only so many cameo videos you can make to cover rent. There's only so many, I don't know, kind of speaking gigs or whatever you can do to make ends meet. And so I just think that they just don't have enough financial firepower to last much longer. So I'm going to say it ends before Thanksgiving. This is getting uninteresting because I was also going to say yes for the same exact reasons.

The longest actor strike ever, the longest writer's strike ever was 153 days. And this would be way past that at Thanksgiving. So I do think they're going to come to a deal. All right. Speaking of deals, the third prompt is give me your shocking merger or act. that's going to happen for the rest of the year. I'm very excited for this one. I think Elon Musk is going to buy U.S. Steel. So that sounds super weird right on paper, but U.S. Steel's stock ticker is X, and we know Elon is obsessed with that letter. And U.S. Steel has put itself up for sale and is fielding multiple offers. Its market cap is just $6.5 billion. I mean, remember, Twitter cost him $42 billion and even more. So I can totally see this happening that Elon buys U.S. Steel just to

the stock ticker X. It's actually not bad. I could totally see it happening if he still has any money left over from burning $44 billion on Twitter. I'm going to say Apple is finally going to pull the trigger and not by Disney, as has been long rumored, but it's going to buy ESPN, which we know Disney is looking for strategic partners for. And Apple has been invested all this into all this money into sports content.

And it's seeing huge dividends with its MLS deal because of, you know, messy. which it all ties back to the top of the top of the show. But I, this could happen. That's been rumored for so long. Yeah. Well, Disney. Apple buying Disney. I could totally see ESPN too as well.

All right. Fourth prompt here, fourth prediction. Predict Miriam Webster's word of the year. Oh my gosh. This one's so hard. The first thing that came to mind, though, when we were planning for this, was hurricane. Because remember that word came out when the hurricane hit California recently.

And then an earthquake also hit California. California. And so the word hurricane came out and just has enough of that extreme weather. It's just big enough that it signifies a larger movement. And it's just a really great word. So I think the word of the year is going to be a hurricane. Has not going to happen. Neil's not on board with it. It happened once. There's not been another. It's extreme weather, maybe. All right. All right. Mine is, I think it's going to be, we are so back. Oh, my gosh. Neil, it's a word of the year. Word.

I think you can do phrases too. You can do it. It's malleable. Like we are so back, right? Everyone's saying it feel like we talked about at the beginning of the show. Feels like we're back in 2019. Things have normalized. And everyone's just saying we are so back.

And it just feels like we're back after 2020 to 2022. Trump is running again for president. Like we're so back. A couple other options I thought could be strike. Yeah. Okay. Algorithm based on all the AI stuff. Indicted.

potentially if they wanted to go the political route or Renaissance. So that kind of ties into the We Are So Back vibe and Beyonce's tour. I had Slay and DeLulu written down so. Could be slave, but I don't think Miriam Webster hangs around Gen Z enough. Yeah, you're right. All right. Final prediction here, Toby, what is going to be the most popular Halloween costume this year? Okay, so the easy one is obviously Ken and Barbie and Oppenheimer, anything on the Barb and

Heinheimer, Ken and Barbie train, but that's too easy. So I'm actually going to pick the Trump mugshot, actually. I feel like we gloss over that. But remember, prison clothes are like a really big staple of Halloween culture. So all you got to do is like put on an orange wig and then you're a Trump mugshot. So I think we're going to see a lot of escapie Trump jail costs. Oh, that's a good idea. Okay, mine is a couple's costume.

And it's going to be Lionel Messi and his bodyguard. Oh, that's really good. Because videos have surfaced recently that there's an ex-Navy seal who follows Messi around the pitch as he, during when he's on the field during the game because he's such a, you know, a security liability. So, yes, there's this ex-Navy seal who's just running back and forth on the, like on the sidelines like a referee. And so I think a great couple's costume could be someone's, you know, hopping around like Messi. And then you have the other one dressed up as, as their bodyguard and kind of like lying them down and, and defend. people against him, so I think that could be fun. That's fantastic.

I did write down a couple's costumes as well. Here's a wild card. You go as Neil and Toby. You could dye your hair blonde. We could do it, like put on some glasses, or even more of a wild card, go as hair and makeup. Okay. That's a little inside baseball,

but if you really wanted to go Morning Brew Daily themed with your Halloween costume, give us a try us on for size. All right, that's weird. That is all the time we have for today. Hope you all have a relaxing Labor Day. As always, you can write to us at the email address Morningbrewdaily at Morningbrew.com to reminisce about the summer or share your predictions for the rest of 2023. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our editor and producer. Raymond Liu is our associate producer.

Eugenawa Ogu is our technical director. Billy Minino is on audio. We'll wake hair and makeup up when September ends. Devin Emery is our chief content officer and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato

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