Crocs is debuting dog clogs. The glow-in-the-dark booties come in green and pink, and humans can buy a matching pair. Not included: instructions to teach your dog to walk in them normally.
Stocks slid yesterday after September inflation came in a tad hotter than expected and weekly jobless claims ticked up. Today, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo are set to kick off Q3 earnings szn. 💬 Quiz and tell: Seriously, if you ace this week’s Snacks Seven quiz, go brag about it. Try the first q: |
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Undercover coins… The Department of Justice charged 18 people and companies following an FBI investigation into what authorities called a “wash trading” and “pump and dump” scheme. In an undercover op, the bureau created its own fake crypto biz along with a real ethereum-based token dubbed “NexfundAI.” The DOJ said three market makers — ZM Quant, CLS Global, and MyTrade — wash-traded (or conspired to wash-trade) the NexfundAI token on behalf of the FBI’s bogus biz.
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- Spin cycle: Wash trading — trading an asset back and forth, often with bots and on a massive scale — is an illegal form of market manipulation.
- Not so clean: It’s been used to artificially inflate the price of coins and NFTs, generate trading rebates, and boost trading volume on exchanges.
- FBI fans: NexfundAI token-trading volume is said to have surged 5,000% after the DOJ revealed that the feds were behind it.
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Heavy duty… Wash trading’s long been a problem in crypto. A report said that in the three years up to September 2023, there was at least $2B in wash trading on ethereum decentralized exchanges. It’s not just an ETH problem: one researcher said a majority of July’s decentralized exchange volumes on solana may’ve been inorganic (think: bots, wash trading). |
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Crypto’s still in cleanup mode… Since FTX, the industry’s worked to shed its shady rep. DOJ charges of market manipulation for hire don’t help. Still, crypto’s made a push to move into the mainstream. Picture: $190M+ given to crypto-friendly PACs and candidates ahead of the US elections, spot bitcoin ETFs boasting a $57B market cap, and an embrace of regulation.
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Path-breaking… Better science isn’t just made in the lab. Finding better medication is all about breakthroughs. At Sanofi, that starts with your path.
Be the change… Working at Sanofi means being a champion of change. Bring your curiosity, and Sanofi will bring you career-defining opportunities: AI-matched mentorship, short-term “gigs” in a new function of business, and experiences that could take your work across the globe.
Whether your background is in tech, finance, marketing or elsewhere, Sanofi is the place to uncover your breakthrough — and help build the next big one.
Pursue progress. Discover extraordinary. See how a career at Sanofi could work for you. |
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Home Swede Home… After some steep discounting last year, build-it-yourself-furniture icon Ikea may’ve found itself stuck between a Rocksjön and an Älskvärd place. Sales at the world’s largest furniture retailer this year fell 5% to $49B — its first revenue drop since 2020 — after it slashed prices on thousands of items by an average of 10%. Ikea said the sales dip could hurt its profit, which it’ll report next month. And though the dollar value of sales was down, transactions were up:
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- Meatballin’: Ikea execs said discounting drove 21% more visits to its stores and website and boosted the # of items it sold by 7%. The company also slung 1.2B meatballs on the year, making it one of the world’s biggest restaurant chains.
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Big bag: Before its discounting wave, Ikea had assembled huge price bumps on some of its products. The cost of a loveseat rose 66% between 2021 and the end of 2022, while a dining-table-and-chairs set (shout out, Jokkmokk) surged 80%.
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Not just Ikea… A wave of retailer discounting appears to be boosting demand. Target, which slashed prices on thousands of items this summer, said its comparable sales last quarter rose for the first time in a year. Walmart, which has discounted 7K+ items, reported 5% quarterly revenue growth. JCPenney yanked prices down last year and saw store traffic more than double. And Costco said that lowering the price of its Kirkland chicken led to a 21% sales bump.
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Disinflation = motivation… Price control is big, especially for retailers known for value like Ikea and Walmart. Price cuts help keep them competitive and spur renewed demand. Other companies have prolonged their promotions after seeing customers return: last month McDonald’s said it would be extending its $5-meal deal. |
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OpenAI identified and disrupted groups using the chatbot to influence elections and execute cyberattacks. Read more. |
⚖️ Judgy… FTX is set to repay former customers as much as $16.5B in cash. Some aren’t happy as that’s likely less than the present value of the coins they lost.
🤔 Sus… Lego’s website was hacked to push a fake Lego coin, promising “secret rewards” to folks who clicked on the bogus offering.
🤖 Techy… Ripple launched a crypto-custody service designed to help banks and TradFi companies store customers’ digital assets. |
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Looking for a strategy that balances growth and income? REX Covered Call ETFs1 combine stock exposure with option-based strategies that utilize single-stock options.
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AMD dropped a new AI chip with the catchy name “Instinct MI325X,” which should directly rival Nvidia’s upcoming Blackwell GPUs.
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Delta blamed July’s CrowdStrike-caused outage for its quarterly earnings miss and lowered its guidance for next quarter, saying folks stay home more during election szn.
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Tilray’s stock slid after the cannabis-and-alcohol co said its summer-quarter revenue grew less than expected, despite its CEO’s high hopes for US pot legalization.
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McDonald’s added a Chicken Big Mac to US menus as fast-food chains push into poultry and Americans eat less beef.
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Hurricane Milton killed at least eight people and knocked out 3M+ Floridians’ power. Airports were expected to resume ops today after the storm moved offshore.
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What’s next? In a role at Sanofi, the answers are endless — in your own career and beyond. See how working at Sanofi lets you discover more, with their industry-leading development program.
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Producer Price Index
- Nobel Peace Prize winner announced
- Yom Kippur begins
- Earnings expected from JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, and Fastenal
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Authors of this Snacks own bitcoin and ethereum and shares of: AMD, Delta, Nvidia, Uber, and Walmart |
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