📈Starbucks Still Sluggish: Starbucks reported its sixth straight quarter of same-store sales declines in North America. Outside of North America, same-store sales slid 7% and in China, same-store sales tumbled 14% (hint: maybe lower your prices).

📈Put Out To Pasture: July’s U.S. jobs report flopped: only 73,000 jobs added, with prior months massively revised down (now 19,000 in May and 14,000 in June). Trump responded by firing the Biden-era BLS commisioner and blasting JPow saying he should be put “out to pasture” for keeping rates steady.

📈Fresh Trim: ABS dropped inflation this week and trimmed-mean and headline values fell to 2.7% and 2.1%, respectively. In a low inflation and low growth environment traders are 100% certain that the RBA will cut on the 12th of August but time will tell.

📈 A Pump and Dump Scheme?: Pheton Holdings Ltd, a Chinese health company had an extraordinary bull-run this year, up 600% until a research report claimed price manipulation. The stock dropped by 95% in the subsequent 3 hours following the report’s release.

🌎 Tariff 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0? On Friday, Trump unveiled an “all-new” reciprocal tariff arrangement after the majority of countries have attempted to bargain theirs down (China-pending). Canada copped an increase 25%→35% while Australia flew by with the minimum, 10%.

🌎 Trump is not a Fan of India: In a seemingly random turn of events, Trump slapped India with a 25% tax due to their “obnoxious” trade barriers, ongoing trade with Russia and generally high tariffs (funny).

🌎 Do You Want Fries with That?: The ol’ earthquake + tsunami combo occurred on Wednesday off the east coast of Russia causing alerts in the US, Japan, Russia and certain pacific island nations. The 8.8-magnitude quake caused minimal damage and minor injuries.

🌎 Israel Calls a Time-out: Sick of the fighting and international condemnation of not providing aid to Palestinians, the Israeli military issued a pause from 10AM-8PM every day until further notice. This will be the first time some civilians have received aid since March this year.

👔Novo’s Gains Just Popped a Wegovy: The weight-loss drug giant plunged 30% this week (it’s worst ever) as Trump’s pressured drugmakers to slash U.S. prices and fears of cheaper Wegovy copycats mounted. A surprise CEO shake-up and missed forecasts didn’t help either.

👔Tesla’s Deal Frenzy: You’d think it was Black Friday with the way Tesla is spending cash. Monday? $16.5 billion eight year-long AI chip deal with Samsung Electronics. Wednesday? $4.3 billion three year-long battery contract with LG. Musk’s cooking up something.

👔How To IPO 101: Following its recent IPO Figma $FIG ( ▼ 2.72% ) has gained 295%. Priced initially at $33/share, one day into trading the price shot up to $122, valuing the company at nearly $60 billion.

👔 Reddit Shares Gets Upvoted: Reddit shares surged nearly 20% after delivering stellar Q2 results. Revenue is up 78% year-over-year and daily active users rose by 21%. CEO Steve Huffman spotlights Reddit’s new AI chabot, which already has 6 million weekly users, as another point of optimism for the company.

🤪Labubu x Karl Marx?: This collab went viral when a Tiktoker placed Labubu dolls on Karl Marx’s grave. The contrast between Marx’s anti-capitalist legacy and Labubu’s hype-driven consumerism sparked a lot of humour online.

🤪 Celibacy wasn’t Working for Shi Yongxin: The celebrity Shaolin monk who dismissed misconduct claims in 2015 is now under official investigation 10 years later. Authorities accuse him of embezzlement and sexual misconduct including fathering 20 children.

🤪 Shooter Targets NFL: Shane Tamura planned to shoot-up the NFL’s downtown Manhattan office but got off on the wrong floor. He managed to kill four non-NFL people before taking his own life. Tamura left a note blaming NFL for his CTE.

🤪 Is Overpopulation or Depopulation Better?: A recently released book titled After the Peak warns declining birth rates could lead to long-term population decline (think extinction by 2800), hence they’re arguing that more children, not fewer, is good for humanity.