Key Points from cnbc.com:

Target executives cited the recent U.S. ports strike and need to bring goods ahead of it as a factor in its big earnings miss on Thursday, due to elevated freight costs and overly stocked stores.

Trade data reviewed by CNBC shows Target imported a level of goods this year across key months in advance of the strike that was similar to 2023′s peak shipping season, essentially flat to down in the overall number of cargo containers.

The data also shows that the value of goods Target imported was higher than at Walmart by $1.2 billion, reinforcing the real problem for the retailer: it missed on its forecast for consumer demand and price-point sensitivity.

 

So what did hurt Target compared to last year?

It is trying to be a higher end retailer than Walmart with products that consumers may buy or leave on the shelf depending on how economically stressed their consumer is. Target’s foot traffic has continued to increase but their customers are not jumping at the products on the shelf. I can’t get a good figure on Target’s ad spend for 2024 but in 2023 they spent $1.4 billion which going back 14 years, that tends to be what they consistently spend on advertisements. Walmart which has always boasted a “no sales” strategy but boast regular pricing spends around $3.4 billion on ads. Target does run sales. Target does issue rainchecks on sale items it does not have in stock so long as they are not clearance, price cut items, or so called everyday low price items. I can not find the number of rainchecks they have recently been issuing which would indicate inventory problems or potential customer dissatisfaction because of an item on sale not being in stock or the perception that there might be a switch and bait strategy going on where the customer comes in for an item on sale but ends up buying a similar but higher priced item.
Continue reading Did Target Mislead on Earnings Miss?

Elon Musk’s X suing Amazon-owned Twitch for not advertising on the platform

On Monday, Twitch was added to X’s ongoing lawsuit against brand members of the now-defunct Global Alliance of Responsible Media (GARM), as first reported by Business Insider. X claims in its lawsuit that members of GARM illegally conspired to boycott the platform formerly known as Twitter in late 2022, shortly after Musk acquired the company.

According to the lawsuit, X says that Twitch has not advertised on the platform in the U.S. since November 2022. As Business Insider reports, X cites a GARM document in its lawsuit that mentions an “executive endorsement” from Twitch regarding GARM’s brand safety standards.

X originally filed the lawsuit back in August. Since then, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) disbanded the coalition of advertisers known as GARM. In addition, X removed Unilever from the lawsuit after reaching an undisclosed agreement with the company.

Regardless of the closure of the GARM initiative, WFA says it intends to fight the allegations in court.

The Sherman Antitrust Act explicitly outlaws collusion, meaning any agreement or conspiracy between competing businesses to restrict trade or manipulate prices in a market, effectively prohibiting them from working together to stifle competition; this is considered a key element of the act’s purpose to promote fair market practices.

The last major instance of the Sherman Antitrust Act being used was in the 1980s, when the Department of Justice broke up AT&T, which held a monopoly on telephone services in the United States; this is considered one of the most recent significant applications of the Sherman Act. If Matt Gaetz becomes AG, his past rhetoric and stands indicate that he may very well bring back enforcement of the Sherman Act.

America’s Media is mostly controlled by 6 companies which is the primary reason the elite media went into overdrive to tank the appointment of Matt Gaetz to be AG; gossip and scandals aside.

It should be noted that Twitch has faced its own advertiser boycott because it stopped people from signing up to the platform from Israel and Palestine. The boycott has hurt some streamers a lot more than other streamers, though there has been some debate on whether the harm to streamers has come from the advertiser boycott or from tags that some streamers have used or the content within their streams. Twitch may have started shadow banning or throttling some streamers to try to prevent the advertiser boycott from growing though that is just supposition and may be unfounded.

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Yet another Hong Kong stock lost most of its value in a sudden one-day drop. Some are concerned that the $5.2 trillion market has become a breeding ground for wild volatility. Then again, some are looking at the volatility as an opportunity to make fast profits.

Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems by Didier Sornette (Princeton Science Library) … If signed in you are awarded 2 SayTokens for clicking link (Note that I get commission for anything you put in shopping cart and purchase shortly after clicking this link. Thanks.)

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China First Capital Group, an investment company that focuses on financial and education services, plunged as much as 78% on Wednesday before trading was suspended. Virscend Education Co., which is partly owned by First Capital, also lost as much as 78% before the buyers jumped in and reduced its decline to around 33% lower. The moves wiped out a combined $1.2 billion in shareholder value.

ArtGo Holdings, a Chinese marble miner, saw its stock crash 98% in Hong Kong trading after MSCI decided not to add it to its any indexes. That plunge wiped out more than $5 billion in market cap for the company.
Continue reading Hong Kong Stock’s Volatile Market Continues

See 11/28/2019 update at the bottom of this article.

The startup, Faraday Future, has around 400 employees.  It has hired executive talent from Tesla.

It was originally incorporated in California in May 2014 as LeTV ENV Inc., according to papers filed with the California Secretary of State. The address in Beijing is associated with Letv, a holding company founded by Chinese tech pioneer Jia Yueting.

Its current name, Faraday Future, takes its name from scientist Michael Faraday.  Michael Faraday was born  September 22, 1791 and died August 25, 1867.  He was born in Newington Butts, England.  Faraday was largely self educated.  Most schools in 18th Century England were run by the Church. True education was accomplished through apprenticeships.  At fourteen he became the apprentice to George Riebau, a local bookbinder and bookseller on Blandford Street in London. Unlike many people in England during this period, he had access to many books and became very well read.   BOOKS THEN, BOOKS/INTERNET NOW, ARE THE PATH TO TRUE LEARNING!!!

At the end of his apprenticeship he attended lectures and met English chemist Humphry Davy of the Royal Institution and Royal Society, and John Tatum, founder of the City Philosophical Society. Faraday was not considered a gentleman. When Davy set out on a long tour of the continent in 1813–15, his valet did not wish to go. Instead, Faraday went as Davy’s scientific assistant, and was asked to act as Davy’s valet until a replacement could be found in Paris. Faraday was forced to fill the role of valet as well as assistant throughout the trip. Davy’s wife, Jane, refused to treat Faraday as an equal and treating him as a servant made Faraday so miserable that he considered returning to England alone and giving up science. The trip did, however, give him access to the scientific elite of Europe and exposed him to a host of interesting ideas from various conversations.

Faraday is best known for his work regarding electricity and magnetism though he was also influential in chemistry.  He was one of the most influential scientists in history. It was by his research on the magnetic field around a conductor carrying a direct current that Faraday established the basis for the concept of the electromagnetic field in physics. Faraday also established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two.   He also discovered the principle of electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism, and the laws of electrolysis. His inventions of electromagnetic rotary devices formed the foundation of electric motor technology, and it was largely due to his efforts that electricity became practical for use in technology.

So anyway….

Back to the billion dollar factory.  California, Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada are finalists for the factory.  Though Yueting is believed to be the primary force behind this new venture, the identities of the players in this startup are unknown.

 
Update 11/22/2019:
Faraday Future is now known for its money troubles, if it is known at all. Talented hires — from SpaceX, Tesla, Apple, and Ford — have mostly left the company to try to make their fortunes elsewhere. The $2 billion it spent to develop a luxury SUV never got off the drawing board. The vehicle is still not in production. The company’s problems are partly thanks to the company’s founder and former CEO Jia Yueting. He reportedly ran from China in 2017 to escape billions of dollars of debt, only to declare bankruptcy in the US.

I guess the moral of this story is that investors should always be aware and weary of shadowy companies attempting to make a big splash. At one point, it is said that some investors actually believed Faraday Future was a front for Apple and that Apple was about to get into the self-driving car market.