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Hey there weekday warriors,

You guys might find this hard to believe, but big tech is having its way with the little guy.

Back in the year of our lord 2021, Apple launched a new “privacy” feature. Unfortunately, it makes it hard for people like me to tell who is actually opening emails.

In fact, the only way for me to tell if you’re actually reading is if you respond to an email or click on something.

So, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP RECEIVING THE WATER COOLEST, YOU NEED TO CLICK THE BUTTON BELOW…

Keep on snapping necks and cashing checks,

- tyler

+ US stocks “were lower after the close on Wednesday, as losses in the Oil & Gas, Technology and Financials sectors led shares lower." (Investing.com)

+ The 10-year Treasury yield “slid on Wednesday as investors assessed the state of the economy after the release of labor market data while awaiting a key report due Friday." (CNBC)

+ Oil "fell nearly 4% on Wednesday to their lowest settlements since June, as worries about global fuel demand mounted after U.S. data showed a larger-than-expected rise in gasoline inventories." (Reuters)

+ Bitcoin “continues to break multi-month highs, topping the $44,000 mark for the first time since April 2022.” (TheStreet)

+ The three most talked about stocks on WallStreetBets in the past 24 hours were: 1) Visa -0.13% 2) Nvidia -2.28% 3) C3.ai -2.96%.

Good night, sweet prince

British American Tobacco was just handed a death sentence… by the nerds in its accounting department…

The British cigarette maker said it plans to take a $31.5B writedown on its US cigarette business. Translation? It’s betting that cigarettes are about to go the way of X’s ad revenue. Are you happy now, anti-smoking campaigners?

While BAT doesn’t think cigarettes will go completely extinct, it also doesn’t believe it can justify the $80B valuation of its US cigarette portfolio.

Ok, but why?

Well, the death spiral of cigarettes hasn’t helped. Never thought I’d feel bad for big tobacco…

Plus, the economic downturn has been forcing smokers to trade down to cheaper brands.

Speaking of trading down… the spike in popularity of e-cigs and vapes, especially amongst the youth, has wreaked havoc on British American Tobacco and the rest of the industry. On the bright side, it’d be a whole lot worse if the FDA didn’t essentially wipe JUUL off the map and crack down on fruit-flavored vapes…

If you can’t beat em, join em…

BAT plans to go all in on vapes, because how else would it meet its KPI of killing countless human beings every year? The plan is to generate 50% of its revenue from e-cigs by 2035. And it’s well on its way. The company said its “new categories” biz will break even this year… ahead of schedule.

You’re not going to believe this, but shares of BAT got crushed, falling 8.5% on the day. Shares of Altria and Philip Morris fell 2.8% and 1.5%, respectively.

🔥Tyler’s take… Ok, now do big oil.

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+ Charlie Munger's Final Advice For Investors Is About Embracing Value In Unlikely Places: 'If Something Is Really Cheap, Even Though It's A Crappy Company, I'm Willing To Consider Buying It' (Read)

+ Barbara Corcoran reveals her ‘golden rule’ of real estate investing (Read)

+ ICYMI yesterday... Microsoft Brings Copilot To Everyone Using Windows: Here Are Four Cool Things You Can Do With It (Read)

+ The CEOs of the largest US banks headed to DC yesterday for their annual cheek-clapping courtesy of lawmakers…

The regional bank sh*tshow earlier this year only added fuel to the fire. One of the most contentious conversations was around new regulations and increased capital requirements for banks. As you might have guessed, the masters of the universe warned that the new rules could stifle lending and hurt the US economy.

But if people came for the Basel Endgame discussion, they stayed for Jamie Dimon’s meltdown. The JPMorgan CEO channeled his inner Charlie Munger (Rest in Power) when crypto came up. He said “I’ve always been deeply opposed to crypto, bitcoin, etc. The only true use case for it is criminals, drug traffickers … money laundering, tax avoidance. If I was the government, I’d close it down.”

Mark this date down, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s probably the only time in the history of the United States of America that Senator Elizabeth Warren will agree with a bank CEO on literally anything… (Read)

+ And the crowd goes mild…

Google officially dropped its better, faster, stronger large language model (read: the data that trains AI) called Gemini (*the Winklevii and their lawyers have entered the chat*).

Just one problem: Google said it outperforms OpenAI’s GPT 3.5. Which would be great if OpenAI hadn’t already released GPT 4. Google refused to answer questions about how it stacked up against OpenAI’s latest chatbot.

This is another black eye for Google. You might recall that earlier this year it hastily put together an AI event that felt like an intern presentation. Alphabet’s AI made a pretty, pretty embarrassing mistake. (Read)

+ Not that it matters because it’s ADP’s jobs report and not the official numbers from Uncle Sam (which drop on Friday), but… payrolls for November came in well below expectations (103k vs. 128k). Meanwhile, wages grew at the slowest rate in 2 years.

Oh, so investors were pumped because that means inflation is easing and J-Poww won’t need to raise rates… right? Not exactly. Markets slid on the day. Perhaps it was because investors already got the buying out of their system earlier this week. Stonks mooned Tuesday after the JOLTS report showed that job openings plummeted. (Read)

+ McDonald’s is not about to sit idly by and let Ozempic win. During its investor day, McDonald’s CEO said it hopes to increase its loyalty program to 250M users and double loyalty member sales to $45B by 2027. Oh, and it plans to open 10k new stores by the year of our lord 2027. Investors were largely unfazed by the news, though. Shares were flat on the day. (Read)

+ The Great Bundling is upon us. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Last week, reports began circulating that Paramount and Apple were discussing a collab (er, bundle). And, now, Hulu and Disney+ are integrating. Of course, it isn’t exactly surprising, since Disney just bought the one-third stake of Hulu it didn’t own. (Read)

Meanwhile, on The Water Coolest blog…

In case you missed them…

+ Elon’s raising $1B… (Read on the TWC Blog)

+ You’re not going to believe where Humana’s corporate jet was last week… (Read on the TWC Blog)

Here's what I'm keeping an eye on today...

+ Broadcom, Lululemon, Dollar General, DocuSign, Planet Labs, and Smartsheet report

+ Microsoft holds its general meeting and Domino's hosts an Investor Day

Yesterday I asked What’s the best GIF of all time?

I totally forgot that this existed. So it wins…

Here’s today’s question…

Perhaps you heard that Taylor Swift won TIME’s Person of the Year honors. So…

Who SHOULD have been TIME’s Person of the Year?

Reply directly to this email and I’ll share the best answers tomorrow.

Oh, and one more thing…

Does this look like the face of a guy you should take financial advice from?

No, it’s the face of a God-fearing family man with sh*t-for-brains. So, act accordingly...

This is not financial advice. Nothing in this newsletter is an investment recommendation. All content is created for entertainment, educational, or informational purposes only. Do your own research, or do yourself a favor and hire a professional.