Hi, Quartz members!
This week has been about Elon Musk (name a week that hasn’t), a rising stock market, and more bad news about interest rates, and the stubbornness of inflation. Let’s hope you’re not looking for a job in the EV world, because Tesla is firing, and hybrids are Detroit’s next bet.
Here are our favorite Quartz stories from last week, plus a bonus chart to get your day started. Enjoying this newsletter? Let us know; we’d love to hear from you.
5 reads we liked on Quartz
🚗 Gassed up. If you want to sell electric cars, you need to have somewhere to refuel them. That’s going to get a little tougher with Tesla just having fired 14,000 people, including nearly its entire supercharger team. It’s also taken down all but three job postings on its North America website, Quartz’s Will Gavin finds.
🏠Split the difference. It’s not going to solve the affordable housing crisis, but if you are in the market for unaffordable housing, a company called Pacaso is slicing up high-end luxury homes for part-time owners. It’s a timeshare, but not? Well, they’re calling it “fractional ownership.”
💊 That’s mine. In its never-ending game of whack-a-mole with the big pharmaceutical companies, the FDA says it’s going to crack down on so-called junk patents. Filed by big pharma companies, these not-quite patents intend to block generic and biosimilar drugs — and protect lucrative prescription markets.
🍟 Drive-out. Would you like fries or that Big Mac? Fast food purveyors are seeing fewer customers and the ones that come are ordering less. Starbucks and McDonald’s are blaming their own high prices for the problem, and their bottom lines are suffering.
🍪 Chips ahoy. If you read our Weekend Brief on U.S. president Biden’s plan to Make American Chips Again, you’ll want to click over to Britney Nguyen’s deep dive into the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, and how it’s become the world’s most important chipmaker.
1 smart chart
The Ozempic craze may not be as crazy as you think. While 1 in 8 Americans reports taking one of the GLP-1 drugs that offer swift and serious weight loss, most of them are actually taking it to treat a chronic condition, like diabetes or heart disease.
🗓️ What to watch for this week
Here’s what our newsroom will be keeping an eye on:
- Monday: The Fed releases its monthly survey of consumer expectations.
- Tuesday: Google has its virtual I/O event, its largest developer’s conference. The Home Depot, Alibaba, Foxconn, and Sony all report earnings before the market opens.
- Wednesday: It’s Consumer Price Index day for the Fed — what will the latest U.S. inflation data tell us? Chinese tech giant Tencent and Burberry are also slated to report earnings, as is Cisco after the bell.
- Thursday: New U.S. home building data will be out. On Wall Street it’s a heavy hitter day for earnings: Walmart, Deere, and Baidu are all up before the bell.
Thanks for reading! Here’s to the week ahead, and don’t hesitate to reach out with questions, comments, and a fraction of a timeshare (we’re in the market). Sunday Reads was brought to you by Peter Green, Morgan Haefner, and Gabriela Riccardi.