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#NotFinancialAdvice

Good cheese advice, as you all know, is to store cheese at 35°–45° F in a high-humidity area, like the bottom of the fridge, where you will forget about it. Also: IF YOU ARE ON A DATE AND LACTOSE INTOLERANT, DO NOT ORDER FONDUE. Now, this isn’t financial advice, but: The other day a reader got in touch to ask if she should go ahead and invest in her employer’s 401(k) program, even though markets are down. My firm opinion, based on being a 45-year-old white man who’s been through several market crises, remains “yes.” Because the markets have historically always corrected for these corrections, and in the long run, you can expect your money to grow by an average of 7% a year no matter when you invest. It’s impossible to time the market, but if you contribute a percentage of your salary to a pension, you’ll end up with a nice pot at the end of your career and nothing about the last few days of market drama is going to change that. I realize that sounds a lot like financial advice, but it isn’t. Trust me!

Cheddlines You Need2Know

• Wall Street quakes on economic trauma

• They spiked her WaPo column, so she quit

• ‘Massive cyberattack’ hit X, says X owner

  • He’s Canada’s new prime minister, eh?

  • CVS to open smaller stores

That fondue mistake is, however, a great way to test whether they really like you.

—Matt Davis, Need2Know Chedditor

P.S. We’ve got some terrifying stock market graphs on our ‘gram.

Quote of the Day

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

(you’re still gonna check it now, aren’t you…)

Stocks mentioned in today’s newsletter

$SPX ( ▲ 0.08% )  $DJI ( ▲ 0.08% )  $NASDAQ ( 0.0% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 0.7% )  $TSLA ( ▲ 5.27% )  $CVS ( ▼ 2.32% )  $TGT ( ▼ 0.13% )  $AMZN ( ▲ 0.65% )  $WBA ( ▼ 0.18% )  $RADCQ ( ▲ 80.0% )  

Wall Street quakes on economic trauma

Asked over the weekend whether he was expecting a recession in 2025, Donald Trump told Fox News: “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we’re doing is very big. We’re bringing wealth back to America. That’s a big thing.” He then added, “It takes a little time. It takes a little time.”

I’m not going to say he should have said it different, but his words did have an impact.

On Monday morning, stocks took a bit of a dive, as you’ll see on our Instagram post below. The S&P 500 $SPX ( ▲ 0.08% ) was down by 3% in late trading, hinting at its steepest decline since the economic upheavals faced due to unprecedented inflation rates back in 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average $DJI ( ▲ 0.08% ) wasn't spared either, with a notable dip of 956 points, equivalent to 2.2%, and the Nasdaq $NASDAQ ( 0.0% ) composite falling by an even more drastic 4.3%.

The market has been on a roller coaster for several days, largely fueled by the unpredictable nature of administration tariff strategies. The fluctuation, with a notable swing of more than 1% either way in seven of the last eight days, raises concerns about the potential for direct economic harm or the likelihood of a standstill as U.S. businesses and consumers grapple with uncertainty. From its peak on February 19, the S&P 500 has seen a downward trajectory, now standing at a concerning 9% decrease. A recession is characterized as a correction of 10% or more.

The job market, albeit stable for now, faces looming threats from these adjustments, with potential ramifications from decreased federal spending and workforce reductions. Despite solid economic performance at the end of the last year, economists are now revising their projections, with growth estimates falling and the likelihood of a recession becoming a tangible concern.

Compounding the turmoil, major tech stocks and AI-driven companies have borne the brunt of the market's unease. Notable players like Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 0.7% ) and Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 5.27% ) saw significant value declines, reflecting investor apprehension. As domestic strategies continue to stir market instability, global economic indicators, particularly from China, present additional challenges with signals of weakening demand and deflationary pressures. Meanwhile value investor Warren Buffet has amassed more than $325 billion in cash over recent months, saying the market looked too expensive. I enjoyed this Tweet on that front, yesterday:

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They spiked her WaPo column, so she quit

A columnist who has worked at The Washington Post for four decades resigned on Monday after the newspaper’s management decided not to run her commentary critical of owner Jeff Bezos’s’s’s’s new editorial policy.

Ruth Marcus, who has worked at the newspaper since 1984, wrote that “it breaks my heart to conclude that I must leave.” Her resignation letter was first reported by, of course, The New York Times.

Her exit is fallout from the billionaire owner's directive that the Post narrow the topics covered by its opinion section to personal liberties and the free market. The newspaper's opinions editor, David Shipley, resigned because of the shift, announced two weeks ago.

Marcus said the Post's publisher, Will Lewis, declined to publish her column, which she said was “respectfully dissenting” from Bezos’s’s edict. It was the first time in nearly 20 years of writing columns that she’s had one killed, she said.

The decision “underscores that the traditional freedom of columnists to select the topics they wish to address and say what they think has been dangerously eroded,” she wrote.

A Post spokesperson said Monday that “we're grateful for Ruth's significant contributions to The Washington Post over the past 40 years. We respect her decision to leave and wish her the best.”

The Post has been struggling over the past year, financially and editorially. Be’z’o’s’s decision last fall that the Post would not endorse a presidential candidate — after the editorial staff had prepared to support Democrat Kamala “Nice Try” Harris — led to an exodus of subscribers. Uncertainty over the paper's direction has led to many of its journalists leaving for other jobs.

Marcus’s resignation on Monday overshadowed a newsroom reorganization plan introduced by Lewis.

From @cheddar

‘Massive cyberattack’ hit X, says X owner

Hours after a series of outages Monday that left X unavailable to dozens thousands of users, Elon Musk claimed the social media platform was being targeted in a “massive cyberattack.”

“We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources," Musk claimed in a post that presumably nobody could read because it was on X. "Either a large, coordinated group and/or a country is involved. Tracing …”

Complaints about outages spiked Monday at 6 a.m. ET and again at 10 a.m, with more than 40,000 users reporting no access to the platform, according to the tracking website Downdetector.com.

A sustained outage that lasted at least an hour began at noon, with the heaviest disruptions occurring along the U.S. coasts. Downdetector.com said that 56% of problems were reported for the X app, while 33% were reported for the website.

In March 2023 the social media platform then known as Twitter experienced a bevy of glitches for over an hour as links stopped working, some users were unable to log in and images were not loading for others.

He’s Canada’s new prime minister, eh?

Mark Carney, a seasoned former carnival barker central banker who may or may not be my editor’s friend’s cousin, is set to lead Canada as its next prime minister following a decisive victory in the Liberal Party leadership vote. At 59, Carney brings to the political stage a remarkable track record and an esteemed international profile, even though you had never heard of him until today.

Carney led the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, through the aftermath of the financial crisis. The United Kingdom called upon him to helm the Bank of England, marking him as the first non-Brit to do so since its inception in 1694—a position he held until 2020. His commitment to addressing global challenges continued with his role as the United Nations' special envoy for climate action and finance, dovetailing his financial acumen with an urgent — and, we hear, totally made-up — global cause.

Carney also spent 13 years at Goldman Sachs. Despite his rich experience in economics and finance, Carney steps into the role of prime minister without a political background. He does, however, have a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University, and master's and doctoral degrees in economics from Oxford University. More important, as an avid hockey enthusiast, he once guarded the goalposts as a backup goalie for Harvard, which is a constitutional qualification to be prime minister of Canada.

It’s likely that Carney will now call an election, with polls showing an uphill battle for his prospects of a long-term premiership. However, his public appeal appears to be gathering momentum. A mid-January poll by Nanos showed his Liberal Party trailing the opposition Conservatives 47% to 20%. Yet recent figures indicate a closing gap, with Liberals climbing to 34% against the Conservatives' 37%. And 3 percent is nothing, right? I mean, it’s how much the U.S. stock market dropped just yesterday!

CVS to open smaller stores

CVS $CVS ( ▼ 2.32% ) will open a dozen smaller stores across the country as part of a strategic reevaluation to remain competitive in an industry increasingly dominated by giants like Target $TGT ( ▼ 0.13% ) , Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 0.65% ) , Walgreens $WBA ( ▼ 0.18% ) , and Rite Aid $RADCQ ( ▲ 80.0% ) . CVS is refocusing on its core offering: drugs. The stores will emphasize a full-service pharmacy amid a limited selection of over-the-counter products.

Each of these microscopic stores will span less than 5,000 square feet, or more than 10 times the size of my apartment, in which three people live. CVS explains this move as an effort to "bridge gaps in care and make it easier for patients to access medications, immunizations, and other pharmacist-provided health care services." The initiative appears to be a direct response to growing concerns over health care deserts and the difficulty some populations encounter in accessing essential medical advice and prescriptions.

The move comes after CVS’s’s broader cost-cutting measures, which saw the closure of over 1,000 stores and a significant workforce reduction—which, come to think of it, might have contributed to that “health-care desert” problem. Yet, with over 9,000 locations, CVS maintains an impressive footprint. And as we all know, footprints in the desert sands never fade.