After a four-year hiatus, Red Lobster is bringing back “Crabfest.” In general, the perceived value of casual dining restaurants (Cracker Barrel, Chili’s, etc.) is going up as cost-conscious customers have been put off by inflation-spiked fast-food menus. We’ve charted Americans’ shifting attitudes toward fast food vs. fast casual vs. casual dining. As far as individual restaurants go, Olive Garden topped the list of brands considered the best for value, but this chain was the only fast-food restaurant to break the top 10.
The S&P 500 opened higher but couldn’t maintain its gains through the trading day, finishing flat. The Nasdaq 100 eked out another record close with a 0.2% gain and set a fresh all-time high early in the session. The Russell 2000 slid 1.2%. Under the hood, the benchmark US stock index was soft, with decliners outnumbering stocks that gained by 229 on the day.
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Usually, the sign that something is not going well over at FedEx is a notification to the effect that your package is stuck somewhere in the bowels of its hub in Memphis. But this week the global economy got a slightly more worrisome notification from FedEx: awful guidance.
Yes, FedEx’s quarterly report is every fear that could be realized during the second-quarter earnings season rolled into one. |
- “We have a referendum on global supply chains every single day,” FedEx president and CEO Rajesh Subramaniam said, which is obviously not an ideal operating environment, to say the least.
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The stock, which has a reputation as something of an economic bellwether given its connections to global trade and consumer demand, is trading at its lowest level relative to the S&P 500 since 2001, when the US was in recession after the dot-com bubble burst.
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Its capex budget for the 12 months ending May 2026 came in about half a billion below expectations, at $4.5 billion. One firm’s capex is another firm’s profits.
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It’s dangerous to extrapolate from any one company’s results, and FedEx’s underperformance includes company-specific issues and is certainly not a pure signal of impending US economic doom. But its C-Suite is far from the only one that continues to fret about the potential impact of levies on US imports and retaliatory measures from other countries: the share of firms that cited trade or tariffs as their most pressing concern picked up from Q1 to Q2.
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The good news is that FedEx, a decidedly un-AI company, is not fully representative of the market-cap-weighted S&P 500, which is dominated by megacap tech firms. The bad news is that sufficiently negative macroeconomic dynamics come for every firm. The OK news is that it’s not clear FedEx is an especially potent macro bellwether, so who knows. Eh, it could be worse. For instance, your package could be stuck in Tennessee. |
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The Next Breakout Company Might Be in Your Pocket |
Everyone’s hunting for the next breakout company. The type of “category disruptor” that grows fast and turns early believers into big winners. 51,000+ investors think that Mode Mobile could be one of those rare finds. Americans spend 4 ½ hours on their phones daily, and Mode Mobile is monetizing that screentime. With over $325M earned by over 50M customers, Mode’s EarnPhone is turning smartphones into income generating assets.
Their previous two raises sold out, and they’re now offering up to 140% bonus shares to qualified investors,1 but only for one week. Being early is everything, and this window is still open.
Offer closes on 7/3 – secure your bonus shares now.2 |
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There was a time when drugstore chains took over local businesses, and we saw banks move into storefronts. But the latest shift in what’s moving into brick-and-mortar locations has been more surprising: a wave of boutique fitness and high-end wellness spots as rising demand for preventative care — and a boom in venture capital funding — is creating a new tier of healthcare.
Additionally, treatments and care that used to require a visit to a hospital can now be done in a small office adjacent to a grocery store, and hospitals are happy to save space for more expensive procedures. Outpatient volumes are expected to grow 10% in the next five years, leading existing medical providers to expand into suburban and Sunbelt markets to reach patients.
The demand has been pushing past traditional medical offices, with many clinics taking up space in former retail locations as brands have been suffering. That old Pier 1 site? It makes a great specialty clinic. Empty big-box superstore? Easily transformed into a medical outpost! And there’s a long list of new startups and franchises opening new branches catering to high-end clients.
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Many of the “med-tail” clinics and fitness sites remain niche compared to the larger medical office, but they’re poised to flex their financial muscles in coming years. The list of new startups and franchises tapping into wellness trends has exploded and the money is coming in fast, too. One AI-powered body scanning startup backed by the founder of Spotify just raised an eye-popping amount of capital to expand in Europe and the US.
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Leaders of 32 major European and North American countries met at the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday and agreed to allocate 5% of gross domestic product to defense by 2035, an enormous rise from the previous target of 2%. The new rule might be a bigger change for some allied members than others. We were surprised to see the US in third place and which two countries were above it, though it made sense in context.
See the chart. |
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