The giant checkers game sets, peg games, and rocking chairs live on. After the public reaction to Cracker Barrel’s new logo was so negative that the company reverted back to its original trademark, the chain has abandoned plans to update the decor of its restaurants.
The S&P 500 rose 0.3% to post a fresh record close thanks to most of the leading tech companies that have been key to its rally in recent years. The Magnificent 7 did more than twice as well as the benchmark US stock index today, with Alphabet up more than 2% and Meta, Nvidia, and Amazon all up at least 1%. But there was one bad Apple…
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At yesterday’s “Awe Dropping” Apple event, the company announced its yearly refresh of the iPhone lineup. The new iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max were joined by a brand-new addition: the iPhone Air, a super-thin model with tougher glass and a faster processor. |
- The company also announced an updated Apple Watch line — Series 11, SE3, and Ultra 3 — with new features like 5G, high blood pressure detection, 24-hour battery life, and satellite communication.
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To go with, Apple launched new AirPods Pro 3 with AI-powered live language translation, a new heart rate sensor, eight hours of battery life, and improved active noise cancellation.
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The iPhone 17 Pro’s $1,099 price tag is a $100 increase from its predecessor, but with double the iPhone 16 Pro’s base storage. The iPhone 17 starts at $799, the iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199, and the new iPhone Air takes the place of the now defunct iPhone Plus, starting at $999.
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While Apple fans no doubt loved it, the market thought the event stunk. Apple shares dipped on the news and were down about 1.4% on the day in afternoon trading.
On average, the tech giant falls 0.4% on the release date of new iPhones and is negative more than 70% of the time, so finishing the day down 1.4% would put this in the bottom third of market receptions to a new iPhone. |
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A potentially complicating factor to the aforementioned data is that Apple has often done quite well in the six months leading up to a new iPhone announcement, roughly 5 percentage points better than its typical six-month return. That’s not the case this time, with Apple shares up about 5% over the past six months compared to a typical near 20% advance in the prelude to a new iPhone drop.
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A popular analyst who goes by the name Troy Teslike currently expects Tesla to sell a record 178,000 vehicles in the US this quarter, which is two-thirds of the way through, up from 156,000 a year ago. (Tesla doesn’t break out vehicle deliveries by region, so Teslike backs up those numbers using Vehicle Identification Number data.)
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The surge, he says, is due in part to pulled-forward demand from subsequent quarters, as buyers generally try to purchase vehicles before the government’s $7,500 EV tax credit ends on September 30.
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Tesla is also trying to get ahead of the incentive deadline, since it’s expected to hurt both the company’s top and bottom lines, by offering steeper discounts than other EV makers. The effort appears to be working, as Tesla is running out of inventory in the US.
- But while the US is Tesla’s biggest market, just one quarter of sales growth isn’t going to smooth out the declines from earlier this year, and presumably gains in Q3 will come at the expense of Q4 sales, after the incentive expires. Nor will it undo continued declining sales in Tesla’s other major markets, like China and Europe.
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Globally, Teslike estimates Tesla sales will be 466,000 in the third quarter — less than a percentage point higher than Q3 2024 (though quite a bit higher than the FactSet analyst consensus of 433,000). |
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For the full year, Teslike is estimating 1.6 million deliveries, a 9% drop in sales compared with last year and about the same number analysts anticipate.
“We’re in this weird transition period where we will lose a lot of incentives in the US,” CEO Elon Musk himself recently told investors, adding that Tesla “could have a few rough quarters” ahead. |
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