Hi! Cheetozard, I choose you… A Flamin' Hot Cheeto shaped like a Pokémon just fetched almost $90,000 at auction. Given you can get a 1 oz bag from Walmart for ~50 cents, that's the equivalent of around 180,000 bags of the cheese-puff snacks. Today we're exploring: |
- AI vs. Earnings: Execs are saying the word "AI" more than they're saying "earnings" on earnings calls.
- Trust me: Trustpilot is seeing its balance sheet grow from AI mentions of its website.
- Record breaking: US vinyl sales topped $1 billion last year for the first time since 1983.
|
🍊We want to keep our newsletter as fresh as we can. It'd help us out a lot if you take three minutes to fill out our 2026 audience survey, so we can keep building it around you. Complete the survey here — we appreciate it! |
Corporate America won't shut up about agentic AI, or AI in general |
Boardrooms have been consumed by AI for a while now, with execs often talking about the two-letter technology more than the results they're actually there to discuss. That chat's now spilled out onto earnings calls: per Bloomberg data, S&P 500 executives said the word "AI" nearly 5,000 times on calls in the first quarter alone, outweighing the word "earnings" by more than 1,250 mentions. |
Members of the C-suite have also been talking more about "agentic AI" — systems that don't just answer your questions but actually do things for you, from booking a meeting to filing expense reports. While mentions of "AI agents" and "agentic AI" on S&P 500 earnings calls were virtually nonexistent until late-2024, they're now in the hundreds, rising more than fivefold over the last five quarters to 245 mentions in Q1 2026. Wall Street's certainly been into the "agent" speak, not least because of the employment implications. Just recently, we've seen a big round of layoffs at Block, 10% of jobs slashed at Atlassian, and reports of huge cuts at Meta, with AI-powered efficiency gains promised in each case. It's not all talk either: retail behemoths like Walmart, Target, and Home Depot have deployed agentic tools across their operations, while Mastercard has launched an AI agent product to provide small businesses with C-suite level solutions. Even the industries most bruised by the hype around the latest tech now try to embrace it. After a massive sell-off in software stocks earlier this year on fears that AI agents could displace traditional Software-as-a-Service models, Nvidia announced Monday that it's teaming up with a slate of software companies — including Adobe, SAP, and Salesforce — to build and run agents using the chipmaker's Agent Toolkit platform. It seems like if you can't beat 'em, join 'em… or at least ask your AI agent what to do next. |
Small Danish company Trustpilot has become a surprise AI winner |
Now that we're done dunking on execs for their nonstop AI chatter, here's our second artificial intelligence story of the day. Amid the sea of AI-bruised software businesses, Trustpilot, a small Danish company founded in 2007, has become a rare AI winner, as good old-fashioned human opinions have turned into a gold mine in the ChatGPT era. Yesterday, the consumer review site revealed that its operating profit nearly tripled to $16 million in 2025 from the year before, pushing its stock up 30%. Trustpilot also highlighted that click-throughs from AI search rose 1,490% year-on-year, while its website was ranked as the 5th most cited domain in ChatGPT globally. This is largely thanks to the rise of agentic commerce that treat Trustpilot's reviews as a reliable source of information to determine which merchants to recommend to shoppers. And that extra traffic is boosting Trustpilot's top line, with the company's revenue skyrocketing 25% in its latest half-year results to $138 million. |
So, how does Trustpilot make money? Put simply, it charges businesses subscription fees to manage, showcase, and collect verified customer reviews. Recently, Trustpilot has been focusing on larger enterprises and high-paying clients — among which the recent traffic bump is "driving heightened interest," per its earnings call, especially as customers who shop through AI chatbots tend to have a clearer intention to purchase than those going through organic internet searches. The virtuous cycle continues: a greater volume of reviews gives Trustpilot more authority with the LLMs, which drives more consumers to certain products or brands in chatbots, meaning businesses want to ask more customers for reviews, which means more reviews... and so on and so forth. Looking forward, Trustpilot wants to turn that trust into cold hard cash, with the company targeting a 30% margin by 2030, up significantly from 16% in 2025. |
|
|
Tap into a toolkit for the tech trade. |
Index options are a rapidly growing segment of the derivatives market. In aggregate, average daily volume across all index options has grown 68% since the end of 2022 — but Nasdaq-100 Index® Options (NDX®) have notched 345% growth in the same period. |
In fact, over the past three years, Nasdaq-100 Index Options have seen a strong uptake in the retail market. Nasdaq-100 Index Options come in two sizes, 100% (NDX) and 1% (XND®) of the full value of the Nasdaq-100 Index, offering flexibility for different portfolio types. With daily, weekly, monthly and long-term expirations available, NDX options have varied use cases for a range of strategies from risk management to income generation. Put it into practice: Discover Nasdaq-100 Index Options with the custom-built Options Architect tool, or get institutional-quality insights at the Nasdaq Options Insights Hub. |
|
|
Vinyl sales topped $1 billion in the US last year |
Since the meteoric rise of music streaming, one might imagine the archetypal vinyl collector of today as an audio aficionado that would be more inclined to snub a Taylor Swift album than buy it. But, statistically speaking, if you purchased a record in the US at all last year, it was most likely "The Life of a Showgirl," which shifted ~1.6 million units on vinyl alone in 2025, over 5x more than any other release. |
While it's worth noting that Swift released 8 different vinyl LP variants of "Showgirl" for her devoted fanbase to collect and pore over — as well as 11 different CD versions, 5 digital-download versions, and one cassette — the broader vinyl revival has been gaining momentum for some time now. In a sign of just how far things have come, US vinyl sales surpassed $1 billion in 2025 for the first time since 1983, per the Recording Industry Association of America's year-end report, published Monday. Unit sales also rose 7.9% from 2024 to 46.8 million last year. |
Last year saw a 9.3% year-over-year rise in baseline wax revenues, marking 19 consecutive years of vinyl sales increasing in the US with an average annual growth rate of ~24%. Meanwhile, when adjusting RIAA data for inflation, the industry juggernaut that is music streaming — which has seen revenues boom over 50x in the last two decades — looks to have plateaued since 2021. As the RIAA reported, however, paid streaming subscriptions still made up over 55% of the $11.5 billion in revenue across recorded music formats for 2025, as behemoths like Spotify continue to hike their prices. Maybe now it's just a matter of time before Taylor Swift Inc. brings cassettes and ringtones back into the mainstream across the next album cycle. |
|
|
- Tesla's Robotaxi program just disclosed its 15th accident — according to estimates from Electrek, this amounts to a crash every 57,000 miles, which is about 9x the rate for humans.
- Lights, camera, contraction… Average occupancy at LA sound stages slipped to 62% in the first half of 2025, once again failing to recover to the ~90% occupancy seen in pre-strike years.
- Bank of America's monthly fund manager survey showed that investors' cash levels jumped to 4.3% in March from 3.4%, marking the biggest retreat from stocks since the pandemic.
- With March Madness underway, a Pew Research report finds that half of Americans in 2025 said gambling isn't a moral issue — a greater share than any other country surveyed.
- Statue of limitations: Viewership for this year's Oscars ceremony hit its lowest point since 2022, falling around 9% year-on-year to 17.9 million.
|
|
| Nasdaq-100 Index® Options have seen a 345% increase in average daily volume since Q2 2022, partly due to uptake among retail traders. See how NDX® and XND® could support your tech trading strategy. |
|
|
- Measuring how vulnerable different jobs are to being replaced by AI, by exposure and adaptability.
- Is the ice cream machine working? This map of every McDonald's in the US will tell you.
|
Off the charts: Having climbed almost 29% in the past 20 days, the last time gas prices rose this sharply in the US was around which 21st-century event? [Answer below]. |
Not a subscriber? Sign up for free below. |
Advertiser's disclosures: Nasdaq® is a registered trademark of Nasdaq, Inc. The information contained above is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and nothing contained herein should be construed as investment advice, either on behalf of a particular security or an overall investment strategy. Neither Nasdaq, Inc. nor any of its affiliates makes any recommendation to buy or sell any security or any representation about the financial condition of any company. Statements regarding Nasdaq-listed companies or Nasdaq proprietary indexes are not guarantees of future performance. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Investors should undertake their own due diligence and carefully evaluate companies before investing. ADVICE FROM A SECURITIES PROFESSIONAL IS STRONGLY ADVISED. For the sake of simplicity, the examples included do not take into consideration commissions and other transaction fees, tax considerations, or margin requirements, which are factors that may significantly affect the economic consequences of a given strategy. An investor should review transaction costs, margin requirements and tax considerations with a broker and tax advisor before entering into any options strategy. Options involve risk and are not suitable for everyone. Prior to buying or selling an option, a person must receive a copy of Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options. Copies may be obtained from your broker, one of the exchanges or The Options Clearing Corporation, One North Wacker Drive, Suite 500, Chicago, IL 60606 or call 1-888-OPTIONS or visit www.888options.com. Any strategies discussed, including examples using actual securities and price data, are strictly for illustrative and education purposes and are not to be construed as an endorsement, recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell securities. © 2026. Nasdaq, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate... See more |
| |
SHERWOOD MEDIA, LLC, 85 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA 94025 |
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment