3 charts for you today exploring:
Everything for a buck
In 1986 the first five locations opened of a new retail outlet, which had a simple premise for what it would sell, and an even simpler name — "Only $1.00".
Although not the first of its kind, "Only $1.00" would grow into what today is Dollar Tree, which is a $33bn giant with more than 15,900 retail locations throughout the US, split between its two biggest brands Dollar Tree and Family Dollar.
Dollar-and-a-quarter Tree
This week Dollar Tree had some big news, announcing that most of its prices will rise from $1 to $1.25. That's a change that the company has been putting off for some time, dropping some products over the years that it could no longer afford to stock for just $1.
When the company started $1 could get you a fair amount. Today it buys you much less. In fact, $1 in 1986 is more like $2.50 in today's money once you account for inflation over those 35 years.
Dollar Tree investors liked the news — with Dollar Tree shares gaining 8% yesterday. If you were lucky enough to buy $1 worth of Dollar Tree shares, instead of spending it in their stores back in 1995, your $1 would be worth more than $125 today.
Tesla is truly the stock of the times. Having more than doubled in value in the last year, the company has become a magnet for the full range of investors from retail traders to hedge funds and institutions.
Data from Koyfin reveals that ~$40bn of Tesla shares changed hands yesterday — more than twice as much as the next most-traded stock, and way more than other mega-cap giants like Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. Put another way, the amount traded in Tesla yesterday was equivalent to the volume traded in 307 members of the S&P 500 Index (which is a group of 500 of the largest companies).
Sort by controversial
A great piece in the FT reveals that the story goes much deeper. We've charted just the vanilla equity trading volume, but the volume traded in financial derivative markets (options) is even more off the charts, with more than $240bn a day recently being bet on Tesla by its army of fans, or detractors (who presumably think the company is overvalued).
Why Tesla has captured the zeitgeist so strongly is probably worthy of a much longer piece, but the short answer is easy to get your ahead around: Elon Musk. The meme-sharing, Dogecoin-loving, Technoking of Tesla (his words, not ours) is controversial. He instills a sense of belief, or strong dislike, in most people — and it's meant Tesla has become the instrument of choice for many to speculate in.
Getting legal entry into the United States has never been an easy or quick process, and it seems to be getting harder, according to the latest data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (via a great article from The Economist).
The data shows there are almost 1.5 million immigration cases currently pending in the US — exactly 5x the number that were pending a decade ago — with the average wait time to get through the system now up to 930 days (roughly 2-and-a-half years).
Some of the more recent backlog can safely be blamed on the pandemic, but policy over the last 10-15 years across multiple administrations and governments has undoubtedly been the longer term driver. Stricter enforcement, a surge in encounters at the borders and only limited increases in resourcing for the courts, have all added up.
1) Could a 4-day work week become the norm? It just did for this UK bank, which reduced the weekly hours of its ~400 staff to 34, with most employees expected to take either Friday or Monday off.
2) The US is set to dip into its strategic oil reserve, with 50 million barrelsset to be released in a bid to combat high energy prices. That's roughly 8% of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
3) What are the most common passwords? Nordpass is back with its annual list. "123456" reigned supreme, but "iloveyou" was a surprise entry at #22.
4) 19 of the top 25 fastest growing public software companies use Outreach to fuel their revenue goals — see how Outreach can supercharge your sales process with a demo.***
5) Nvidia revealed its latest AI effort this week — GauGAN2 — which can translate text into lifelike images of beaches, sky or other landscapes... that don't actually exist.
6) Zoom's revenue growth slowed again in its latest earnings release, confirming that the best days of the "Zoom Boom" are well and truly in the past.
***This is sponsored content.
