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|  |  | Friday, December 19, 2025 | |  | | Sheldon Cooper/SOPA Images/LightRocket | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, the dollar undercuts American swagger, Eli Lilly undercuts needles with a daily pill, your pantry undercuts holiday cheer with pricier cookies for Santa, and the market undercuts reason with an AI stock up 55,000%. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | Inflation data finally drops, and it’s better than
feared. The November report landed at 2.7% headline inflation, but tariffs and essentials are still climbing — awkward timing for a White House selling 2026 relief. | Trump Media goes thermonuclear. It’s putting up to $200 million now (and maybe $100 million later) to merge with fusion company TAE at a
$6 billion valuation, sending shares up more than 20% premarket. | Elon Musk’s school moonshot is
grounded. Families were sold a Montessori-style private school for roughly 50 students, but the site now just appears to serve around 10 children ages 5 and under after a slowed launch. | Leaving cookies for Santa is now a luxury ritual. FinanceBuzz estimates sugar-cookie ingredients cost 31% more than five years ago,
pushing the holiday tradition to $8.44 — with eggs up 136% since 2020. | | | SPONSORED |  | Erase
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| | BUCK AND COVER | The dollar opened 2025 near historic highs, still carrying itself like the undefeated champ of a 10-year bull run powered by strong U.S. growth, deep markets, and higher rates than much of the developed world. Then, the
first half of the year landed a clean shot. From January through June, the dollar fell roughly 11% against a basket of major currencies, the worst first-half performance since 1973, and suddenly the market’s favorite “default setting” — the dollar — looked a whole lot more optional.
Investors didn’t need a dramatic Fed pivot to get there. After the 2024 election, markets had largely priced in another round of U.S. outperformance. But tariff announcements and broader policy
uncertainty blew up that easy confidence and shoved growth, inflation, and public debt into the argument. The Fed stuck with “wait and see,” but the dollar still slid as the mood shifted toward slower U.S. growth, eventual lower rates, and a fuzzier U.S. edge on governance and predictability. And with foreign investors holding over $30 trillion in U.S. assets and much of it historically left unhedged, even a modest shift toward adding currency hedges meant more dollar selling — and more downward pressure.
By midyear, the dollar found a floor, then mostly just… stayed there. Stronger-than-expected economic data in July and signs that tariffs hadn’t dented activity as much as feared helped stabilize sentiment, but the currency has hovered near 12-month lows through much of the second half. The 2026 question is whether this recalibration keeps rolling or snaps back into “flight to safety” mode — with Morgan Stanley expecting further declines as U.S. growth slows and rate gaps narrow, while others see renewed trade tensions
or a sharper slowdown as the kind of chaos that can still make the U.S. the default shelter. Either way: Your Italian vacation gets pricier, European leather becomes a bigger flex, and the rest of us get the quiet version of inflation — a few dollars here, a few dollars there, and a few more “how is this so expensive?” moments at the cash register. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on the midyear floor and the missing bounce. | | | RECOMMENDED READING | The
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| | | FLIP THE SCRIPT | Eli Lilly is turning weekly weight-loss shots into a daily habit. On Thursday, the company said its experimental obesity pill, orforglipron, helped most patients hang onto their new selves after switching over from
weekly injections of Zepbound or Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy. In a Phase 3 trial, patients who moved to the daily pill after a year on Wegovy gained an average of just 0.9 kilogram, while Zepbound switchers added about 5 kilograms — more of a controlled giveback rather than the usual rebound when injections stop. Wall Street liked the math: Lilly’s stock was up about 2.3% by early afternoon and 1.5% by the end of the day.
This is an off-ramp pitch, dressed in trial data. Many patients
regain weight once they stop a GLP-1, and right now, those drugs are only available as weekly injections — which means “long-term” can start sounding like “forever.” Lilly has already filed for FDA approval of orforglipron as an initial obesity treatment, and the FDA awarded it a priority review voucher in November that could compress the timeline to a few months.
The convenience war is also a price war. Injectables work better, but pills are expected to be cheaper. Weekly
injectable GLP-1s can run $350 a month or more, while Lilly and Novo Nordisk have both pointed to around $150 a month for their pill versions. Novo’s own oral GLP-1 pill is likely to be approved within weeks, but it asks users to take it on an empty stomach before breakfast, while Lilly’s pill is designed as a simpler once-daily dose. If regulators sign off, the weight-loss boom shifts from “miracle shot” energy to something pharma likes even better — a daily habit in a pill bottle. Quartz’s Catherine Arnst has more on the maintenance math and why it matters. | | | SPONSORED |  | Why You
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