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Here’s what you need to know
Curve your enthusiasm. Are we headed for a recession? Well, here’s what top banks and economists say about that possibility amid trade war whiplash and stock market volatility.
Buy bye. Consumer confidence has sunk to its lowest level since May 2020 amid tariffs, inflation concerns, and job fears.
Heavyweight deal. Hims & Hers struck a big deal with Novo Nordisk: shipping and selling the weight-loss drug directly to customers. The telehealth company’s stock soared as a result.
Posts up. Meta reports its first-quarter earnings tomorrow. Investors remain cautiously optimistic but will be closely watching the company’s ad revenue and spending.
Prime suspect. Amazon drew the White House’s ire due to a report that said it would list tariff-related price hikes on its site — but the company said the report wasn’t true.
Return to sender. UPS will cut 20,000 jobs this year and shutter over 70 facilities after significantly scaling back its delivery partnership with Amazon, previously its biggest customer.
Mission: deliverable. Amazon went to space for the first time, launching 27 satellites as part of Project Kuiper, as Jeff Bezos looks to catch up to Elon Musk in the billionaire space race.
Flight club. American Airlines and JetBlue are heading to court after their partnership fell apart. American alleges its fellow flight company owes it $1 million.
Quad goals
Four of Wall Street’s favorite tickers — AAPL, AMZN, META, MSFT — all report earnings this week, and there’s a whole lot at stake. What they say could shape how the entire market moves.
Together, these four companies are worth more than $9 trillion, and they make up nearly 20% of the S&P 500, over 30% of the Nasdaq 100, and more than 10% of the Dow Jones Industrial Average (even though Meta’s not even in it). When they rise or fall, so does everyone else. But they’re reporting earnings against a particularly tricky backdrop.
Meta and Microsoft report Wednesday after the bell. Key for Microsoft will be Azure growth and whether Copilot is showing up in the numbers. Meta investors will look at its digital ads, Reels monetization, and whether its AI efforts can ever be more than experiments. Then, Amazon and Apple report Thursday. With tariff pressures starting to affect both, cloud and retail margins take center stage for Amazon, while Apple investors are watching to see if services can help save those margins.
If these four post strong quarters, that could help steady investor confidence in the markets at large. If they don’t, things could get bumpy. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on Big Tech’s quarter-life crisis.
Recipe for trouble
The signs are simmering that a restaurant recession might be on the menu.
Sysco, the massive Houston-based distributor that supplies much of the U.S. dining economy, released its earnings report Tuesday. It cut its 2025 sales growth forecast by nearly 30%, saying environmental issues (wildfires and bad weather) and waning consumer confidence have slowed foot traffic and bit into sales. Sysco’s dip in shipments and pausing of certain business investments are a big warning sign for the industry.
This tracks with data from the rest of the restaurant industry. According to the National Restaurant Association, just 18% of restaurant operators reported higher same-store sales in February, down sharply from 51% from January. And operators reported sharp declines in sales, too. So the warning signs are there that Americans are tightening their takeout budgets. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on an unappetizing forecast.
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