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Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• Little Luxuries for the Food Obsessed

• Dow Pops 500 Points on Hopes of U.S.-Iran Peace De …

• $4.7B Withdrawn From Binance After Heist

• Anthropic Revenue Surges on Verge of IPO

• How AI Makes Voter Microtargeting Scarily Easy

• Poll of the Day: Let’s Test Your Fortune-Telling

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.51% )  $DJI ( ▲ 0.41% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$AMZN ( ▲ 2.2% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 1.26% )  $ORCL ( ▼ 8.76% )  $BNB ( ▼ 1.03% )  $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.85% )

Little Luxuries for the Food Obsessed

From my colleague Lauren Babbage…

I really think we’ve lost the art of gift giving. While I do love me some Amazon, I feel like people are quick to buy generic gifts from big-box stores just to check the box. Gift giving is my love language and I spend WAY too much time finding the perfect gift for everyone (well, what I think is the perfect gift. I get good feedback, so I’ll pat myself on the back for this skill, but I’m sure I strike out here and there).

I’ve thoughtfully put together some lists of gifts for our readers that A) I have myself and love, B) is on my list for myself or someone else this year, or C) I’ve gifted to someone in the past. 

I truly believe in recommending items I can stand behind, and not just throwing links out there. So here we go…happy shopping! 

-Lauren

• The biggest trend I’m seeing right now is buying your own “olive tree” and getting bottles of olive oil from said tree. There are a few different websites for this; however, I am finding a lot are “sold out” or pretty expensive. While that’s indeed a fun gift, some really nice bottles of olive oil not from your own personal tree would be nice as well. I gift Brightland and/or Graza to the foodies in my life.

• Farm Steady has the best “at-home” kits for a fun family activity. They sell these at my local home goods store and I buy one every year for a few different family members. I am particular to the soft pretzel kit, but I’ve gifted the donut and cheese kits as well. Big hit!

• If you’re shopping for someone who loves a good subscription service, CrateJoy is a great catch-all website to filter what type of subscription you’re looking for based on category and price. In my family, we gift a lot of cocktail type subscription boxes. We find that people can use each box whenever they want, but it’s also a fun thing to pull out when they have company. CrateJoy has food, wine, clothing, date night, and more. 

• One VERY popular company I’m seeing a lot of my friends order from is Boarderie. This company makes the most amazing charcuterie boards but in all different themes and tastes. This is an amazing gift if you’re going to someone’s house for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Or if you want to mail it to a family member you know will enjoy some great treats. I actually just ordered this one for Thanksgiving, since I’m hosting :) You can pick a delivery date, which is great for a set-it-and-forget-it gift. 

• For more of a stocking stuffer or something to put in a larger gift bag, Bon-Bon Candy is amazing. It looks and tastes a little more elevated than just your average candy aisle treat. The packaging is beautiful and it’s candy… so you know everyone will enjoy.

• Hostess gifts are always a last-second panic. What I typically do is buy a few really cute holiday mugs (Anthropology is my go-to) and a few of these hot chocolate mixtures. Pop them in a holiday bag and you have a thoughtful gift your host will actually use. (Candles are fine, but…yawn.) And on the mug note… I’ve been seeing a lot of these “sipper” mugs this year. I have not tried them, so I can’t vouch for how well they work, but they are absolutely adorable.

• I’m in the market for some new red wine glasses this year, so I’ve been on the hunt and while I personally need to stick to just the classic, everyday design (I have too much “fun” and “unique” glassware at the moment), I have found so many very unique glasses that I would love to be gifted! This is a great gift for a wine lover who may not go out on a limb and buy something like this for themselves. My favs: Joss and Main Monticello glass (I like blue), this Anthropology stemless glass is perfection, and for some holiday themed fun these Wayfair tree glasses are great. Are they super practical? Maybe not. But who needs to be practical around the holidays. I guarantee this gift will get an audible reaction when opened. 

Thanks, Lauren! Tune in next Tuesday for our next gift guide!

Quote of the Day

Dow Pops 500 Points on Hopes of U.S.-Iran Peace Deal

Nothing brightens Wall Street’s mood quite like a sudden whiff of geopolitical harmony. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 566 points (1.1%) to reach 52,336, while Brent crude prices plunged over 7% to a near two-week low — all because investors caught wind of a potential U.S.-Iran peace deal. Traders celebrated the prospect of ending an eight-month conflict following Iran's talks with Qatari officials, proving once again that financial markets react to diplomacy like a cat chasing a laser pointer.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian fueled the market optimism by confirming that the supreme leader had granted “certain authorities” to the government regarding peace negotiations. So, that’s as good as done, then, right?

As crude prices tumbled, megacap tech favorites like Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 2.2% )  and Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 1.26% )  enjoyed a welcome breather, jumping 4.1% and 1.5%, respectively, after a bruising October. But don't pop the champagne just yet: Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 8.76% )  slipped 5.8% after revealing plans to raise $20 billion through debt and stock sales, reminding everyone that debt-funded spending is getting much harder to justify as borrowing costs rise. Meanwhile, Wall Street remains hyper-focused on upcoming corporate earnings reports and today’s midterm elections.

$4.7B Withdrawn From Binance After Heist

Following what experts call the largest bank heist in history, digital-asset giant Binance $BNB ( ▼ 1.03% ) watched customer outflows surge past $4.7 billion after reopening withdrawal gates on Sunday. Naturally, crypto investors responded with their trademark calm by smashing the "withdraw" button as fast as humanly possible. But Binance leadership put on a brave face, pointing out that the outflows represented a modest 3% of the exchange’s $157 billion total assets.

Binance co-founder Yi He even took to X to reassure anxious traders, writing, “Some are large Binance cold wallet transfers to hot wallets, please keep following along!”—attaching a heart emoji, because digital affection always calms a crowd fleeing a house fire. Meanwhile, co-CEO Richard Teng admitted that the security team “uncovered additional points of breach,” confirming that a compromised employee laptop was only part of the story.

Song of the Day: Dominic Fike, ‘Casting Call’

“Casting Call” explores the self-aware and honest experience of reaching out to ex-flings to fill an emotional void. So, it’s a lot like this newsletter!

Anthropic Revenue Surges on Verge of IPO

In the wildest financial flex in Silicon Valley history, artificial intelligence developer Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.85% ) updated its financial disclosures a week after filing for its public offering, revealing a jaw-dropping 12-fold surge in third-quarter revenue to $17 billion. But before you break open your piggy bank to snag shares, there is a minor detail to consider: The company also posted a staggering $23 billion net loss for the exact same quarter.

In the high-stakes AI arms race, generating massive sales requires spending even more astronomical sums on computing infrastructure. For the first nine months of the year, Anthropic generated $33 billion in revenue, while overall net losses hit $104 billion — a figure heavily skewed by a $94 billion one-time accounting charge related to convertible debt. To keep its models running, Anthropic has committed a mind-boggling $895 billion in contracts for data centers, chips, and computing power, with nearly $70 billion coming due over the next 12 months alone.

Although Anthropic is sitting on $146.6 billion in cash and accessible investments and could seek a $2 trillion valuation in a record-setting $100 billion offering, industry observers are raising valid questions about whether rapid sales growth can keep pace with bleeding cash reserves.

Highlighting the financial tightrope Anthropic is walking, Brandon Ross, an analyst at LightShed Partners, observed, “They are efficient, but as they build their own infrastructure, cash is going to bleed now.”

By choosing to allocate shares to everyday retail investors, Anthropic is inviting Main Street along for a wild roller-coaster ride — where revenue explodes by 1,200%, but server bills cost nearly a trillion dollars.

Free Yourself From Advertising Forever!

How AI Makes Voter Microtargeting Scarily Easy

Forget traditional broadcast campaign ads blaring over commercial breaks. In modern political campaigning, AI is upgrading campaign strategy from carpet-bombing to launching precision digital “missiles” directly at your smartphone, the New York Times reports.

Thanks to cheap off-the-shelf AI tools, campaigns no longer need massive analytics teams to figure out what makes individual voters tick. Instead, algorithms digest census records, voting histories, and local commodity prices to generate hyper-personalized texts and viral content. Scott Goodstein, who directed online operations for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, put it succinctly: “I no longer have to stand in a church parking lot with a flier saying ‘Vote Wednesday,’ when I can literally send out a digital message to a matched voter file saying ‘Vote Wednesday’ or ‘The vote is off’.”

Interactive AI agents can now text constituents in multiple languages, maintaining continuous conversations while gathering data. Julie Sweet of the American Association of Political Consultants notes this creates a “listening and learning loop that we haven’t really seen before,” making voter outreach far cheaper and deeper than traditional polling. Meanwhile, Jevin West, a misinformation researcher at the University of Washington, warns that AI is “able to hyper-personalize and microtarget in ways that are many levels above what we were already doing, and now the persuasiveness is on a different scale, too.”

Of course, when campaign managers can hit a button to reach 20 million people with 20 million different messages, public oversight vanishes. As Mekela Panditharatne of the Brennan Center for Justice cautions, microtargeting “poses a real problem for democratic accountability because those messages aren’t being vetted in the broader public square.”

So next time a surprisingly empathetic bot texts you about local pothole repairs, remember: It’s possible you've just been microtargeted!

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👍️ 

Sure, why not?

Poll of the Day: Let’s Test Your Fortune-Telling

Poll of the Day: It’s Too Expensive to Watch the NFL on TV

We asked: Is the NFL too expensive to watch on the TV?

You answered:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes. (55)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes. (5)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes, yes, yes. (7)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (15)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (13)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (12)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (11)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (9)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. (247)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ No. (34)
408 Votes via @beehiiv polls

Kudos to the 34 people who evidently think it’s great value, btw.

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