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|  |  | Tuesday, December 16, 2025 | |  | | Image by Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, Walmart served “I’ll have what she’s having” in bulk croissants, the Santa rally looks inconceivable despite the Fed saying “as you wish,” holiday layoffs are rewriting “Misery” into the calendar, and the IRS is being asked to handle the truth of a “few good pet dependents” in court. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | America’s affordability debate has a new
number. Michael Green’s argument that $140,000 is the real poverty line for a family of four went viral, but critics contested his inputs — including what counts as necessity. | Holiday layoffs are back on the calendar. Challenger reported the biggest November job-cut total in three years and the lowest hiring level in 15 years, as companies signal cuts while investors press for results. | Even McKinsey is cutting back. The consulting firm is reportedly planning cuts across non-client-facing staff, with several thousand jobs
potentially on the line, amid weaker demand, lower use, and more automation. | Hassett says Trump won’t sway Fed votes. The potential Powell replacement claimed the president
would have “no weight” on the FOMC, even as Trump pushes for faster cuts and said the chair should consult him. | | | SPONSORED |  | Take back your time with marketing automation tools. | Feel like you have all the time in the world to market your small business? Yeah, didn’t think so.
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| | SHELF-CONTROL ISSUES | On Walmart’s latest earnings call, the clearest sign of the company’s shifting customer base came boxed — and buttered. Sam’s Club dropped its croissant pack by $1, watched sales double, and removed the shelf,
executives said, after the new volume made the setup unworkable. A price tweak strong enough to force a tiny architectural decision is the kind of detail executives love, because it’s measurable, repeatable, and flattering. It’s value that feels a little premium, premium that still feels responsible, and a shopping habit that looks a lot like the new center of gravity for Walmart and Sam’s Club.
CEO Doug McMillon didn’t spend the call framing Walmart as a last resort. He told
analysts that “upper- and middle-income households are driving our growth,” and that the company continues to benefit from “higher-income families choosing to shop with us more often,” even as “lower-income families have been under additional pressure.” The numbers line up with that shift. Walmart said roughly 75% of its share gains now come from households earning more than $100,000. Sam’s Club memberships rose 9% in the most recent quarter. Pickup and delivery are growing by double digits. The basket is getting broader, too, with gains in
fashion, home, automotive, and health and wellness, plus more than 40% year-over-year online growth in toys, electronics, and apparel — a broader basket from a broader customer set.
This is the K-shaped economy showing up in aisle seven, wearing On sneakers and a Patagonia vest, and acting extremely normal about a croissant haul. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last week that consumer-facing companies that serve low- and moderate-income shoppers are watching people “tightening their
belts,” while high asset values sit with people at the top — and “the top third accounts for way more than a third of the consumption.” Walmart is increasingly built to catch that top-third spend, turning trade-down into something that can feel almost aspirational. Investors have treated the shift as more than a cute croissant story: Walmart shares are up roughly 140% over the past five years, beating the S&P 500’s 90% gain, which is what happens when a value retailer starts looking like a compounding asset. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on what “value” looks like when it’s a choice, not a constraint. | | | RECOMMENDED READING | The
future of tech, decoded.
Semafor Technology unpacks the ideas, innovations, and power shifts redefining the global tech landscape. From AI and machine learning to the startups and policies shaping
the industry, each briefing delivers clarity and depth on the tech transforming our world
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| | | HO HO HOLD | The market’s hoped-for “Santa rally” hasn’t really shown up, even after last week’s Fed cut, because investors keep tripping over the same question in different fonts: Is AI about to pay for itself, or are we still in the
“spend first, maybe find profit later” phase? Kyle Rodda, a senior financial market analyst at Capital.com, wrote that “It’s starting to look a lot like Christmas,” but despite that, “the Santa Rally hasn’t really taken off yet. Even with a dovish cut from the Fed last week, which would ordinarily set the bulls (and reindeer?) running, valuation concerns are again raining on the parade.” Here’s the problem: “Valuation
concerns” is increasingly becoming code for AI bubble math. Bridgewater’s Greg Jensen warned today that Big Tech’s growing reliance on external capital to finance the AI buildout is “dangerous,” with spending outstripping internal cash generation — the kind of sentence that makes risk managers sit up straighter. The Bank of England has been waving a similar flag about AI-linked valuations and the debt-financed infrastructure boom, warning a correction could spill into wider markets. And last week, Oracle provided the week’s most convenient
cautionary tale when shares sank by as much as 16% after results and forecasts, feeding doubts about how quickly big AI bets will pay off.
In the background, the street is still split. Citi is out today with a 2026 year-end S&P 500 target of 7,700 and said it expects AI to remain a key theme, while also flagging higher volatility and a “winners versus losers” market. So Monday’s mood was wobbly, not festive. The S&P 500 slipped 0.2%, the Dow fell 0.1%, and the Nasdaq dropped
0.6% as investors kept side-eyeing AI profitability questions while waiting on more economic data. Rodda’s real 2026 cliffhanger is whether AI delivers the productivity surge that justifies all this spending, or whether “its benefits, especially when it comes to growth and productivity, are still to be determined.” Santa can work with a lot, but he can’t work with “still to be determined.” Quartz’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig has more on why this year’s rally got stuck in the chimney. | | | SPONSORED | | Take back your time with marketing automation tools. | Feel like you have all the time in the world to market your small business? Yeah, didn’t think so.
The good news? You do have Constant Contact: the marketing platform that makes it quick and easy to reach your customers at the right time, every time —
automatically.
Whether you want to engage your audience or make more sales (or both), there’s an automation template for you. Show you care with birthday messages, remind customers what they’re missing with abandoned cart emails, send offers to get lapsed customers back into the swing of things, and more. Plus, you can even create your own automation paths.
Make marketing easier by setting up automatic triggered messages that make sense for your business. Your time is precious, Quartz readers. Save more of it with Constant Contact’s marketing automation tools. Try them for free today. | | |
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