Musk’s Deal With Twitter Is Back On (For This Week at Least)

October 11th, 2022

Last week’s market summary (October 3rd-7th, 2022):

• S&P 500: +0.83%
• Dow: +1.53%
• Nasdaq: -0.06%
• Bitcoin: +2.54%

Hey Junkies,

Happy belated Columbus Day! I was lucky enough to have off yesterday for the holiday (yep, I'm rubbing that in) so that's why our email is coming out a day later than usual.

Without further ado, here's what we're covering today:

• Musk Recommits to Buying Twitter – But The Timing Is Curious
• Wall Street Choked on September's “Goldilocks” Jobs Report
• “Ghost Cattle” Scam Lands Rancher in Prison for 11 Years
• OPEC Cut Its Oil Production, Angering Everyone But Russia
• It's Not Delivery, It's…a Pizza Robot?

Keep reading to learn more about each of these stories and to get a look at upcoming economic events that should be on your radar.

Clint, Editor-in-Chief

What Everyone’s Been Buzzing About

1. Musk Recommits to Buying Twitter – But The Timing Is Curious

In an October 5th SEC filing, Elon revealed that he did, in fact, intent to close his buyout deal with Twitter. But in order for that to happen, he needed the judge to delay the court proceedings (which it just so happened were scheduled to commence on October 6th).

So does Musk really want to buy Twitter or is he just delaying things until he can come up with a better legal excuse to back out of the deal? Who knows. After all, it's Musk that we're talking about here and his actions often seem as unpredictable as the price of his beloved Dogecoin.

For what it's worth, Twitter investors liked the development. The company's stock shot up nearly 25% on Tuesday after news broke of Musk's unexpected change of heart.

2. Wall Street Choked on September's “Goldilocks” Jobs Report

For its inflation-fighting efforts to work, the Fed needs the red-hot economy to slow down. But if the job market declines too quick and too fast, it could also thrust the U.S. into a steep recession.

With this in mind, many analysts were hoping for a “Goldilocks” jobs report that wasn't too hot cot or cold, but rather warm or (even better) cool. By many accounts, that's exactly what we got on Friday. The 263,000 new jobs that were created came in below the consensus estimate of 275,000. But on the flip side, the unemployment rate was 3.5% which was a dip from August's rate of 3.7%.

So investors should have been happy right? Not so. Instead the S&P 500 fell by 2.80% and the Dow by 2.11% on Friday. What gives? Wall Street pros seem hyper-focused on that unemployment number. As long as it's going down, they're not to buy into the idea that Fed's rate hikes are working.

3. “Ghost Cattle” Scam Lands Rancher in Prison for 11 Years

Our IJ team has heard of all kinds of investing scams and crypto scams, but this is the first time that we've heard of a “ghost cattle” scam. Last week, rancher Cody Easterday received an 11-year prison sentence for scamming Tyson Foods out of $244 million.

Apparently, Easterday received about $2 billion in total from Tyson that was meant to be used to purchase and raise cattle. It turns out that padded his invoices by about 10% to help cover his mounting commodity trading losses. In total, he invoiced for 260,000 heads of non-existent (ghost) cattle.

Thanks to companies like Agridime, “cattle investing” has been growing in popularity recently. But between a cattle Ponzi scheme that was busted in August and now this, this budding asset class seems ripe for fraud.

4. OPEC Cut Its Oil Production, Angering Everyone But Russia

OPEC, the intergovernmental oil conglomerate led by Saudi Arabia, agreed last Wednesday to cut oil drilling by 2 million barrels per day. The decision was framed as a way to stem the slide of oil prices — they had fallen approximately $40 per gallon since June — but politicians around the world think there's more to it.

In December, price caps on Russian oil were set to go into effect as well as a European Union ban on Russian oil. Those moves were meant to reduce worldwide dependency on Russian crude, but the OPEC move means that countries could face severe supply restrictions over the winter. And that likely means higher prices for consumers.

The move couldn't come at a worse time for President Biden who had repeatedly taken credit for the recent price relief at the pump and was hoping that the lower prices would rally support for the Democrat party in the November midterms. Biden blasted OPEC's move and said that the U.S. is looking at “alternatives,” but no retaliatory moves have been announced as of yet.

Learn more >> Oil vs. Renewable Energy Stocks: Which Should You Invest in Today?

5. It's Not Delivery, It's…a Pizza Robot?

Jay-Z's Marcy Venture Partners led a $16.5 million funding round last week for robo pizza truck company Stellar. The food truck company, which is founded by former Space-X employees, uses robots to make the pizzas which are then delivered to customers' homes by a human driver.

The pizza robots can prepare a pie in less than 5 minutes and the trucks can currently handle a max daily capacity of 420 pizzas. Stellar is just one of multiple startups that are looking to get into the robot-powered pizza business. Others include Picnic Works, PizzaHQ, and Piestro.

What To Keep Your Eye on This Week

Here are a few noteworthy economic events that are coming this week:

• Tuesday, October 11th: NY Fed 5-Year Inflation Expectations | October
• Thursday, October 13th: Consumer Price Index (CPI) | September
• Friday, October 14th: Retail Sales | September
• Friday, October 14th: Import Price Index | September

Staff Favorites

At IJ, we're well aware that many other news teams and websites are creating great personal finance content. So each week we like to call out a few recent stories from our colleagues that we felt were interesting, eye-opening, challenging, inspiring…or just funny.

Here are our picks for this week:

• The Housing Revolution Is Coming (The Atlantic)
• Biden’s Choice After OPEC Cuts: Woo Saudi Arabia, or Retaliate? (New York Times)
• The Storm Coming for Florida’s Insurance Market (Politico) 

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