Markets Cheer for TACO Trade Return & Ryanair vs. Musk is Good for Biz

0:00Neal Freyman:FanDuel is dropping bonus bets into everyone's account for the tournament. All you have to do is opt in to claim your bonus. But don't wait. These bonus bets are only available for a limited time. FanDuel. Play your game. 21 plus and present in select states. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable bonus bets which expire 7 days after receipt. Max bonus$500 unless otherwise specified. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. good morning brew daily show i'm neil freiman and i'm toby howell today it's tacos for breakfast as trump backs off greenland tariff threats ben is elon musk really gonna buy ryan air it's thursday january 22nd let's ride

0:52this winter america is turning into a nation of monks not only is dry january in full swing but a new, even more hardcore test of discipline has surged in popularity. No by January. The Wall Street Journal notes that many younger people inspired by social media have taken a pledge to avoid purchasing anything that's not essential, things like clothes or electronics for the 31 days of January. It's not necessarily new, but it is far more mainstream than before. Google searches for no by January hit a five-year high this December, according to PwC, and a survey by NerdWallet found more than one quarter have tried no spend January with 12 % hopping on the trend in 2026.

1:33Toby, what do you think is easy for you? Dry January or no buy January?

1:37Neal Freyman:See, I'm more of a financially crippling February kind of guy, a multi-buy March, an affluent April, a massive debt May kind of guy. In reality, I do love any January challenge. So for the last eight or nine days of the year, I'm not buying anything either in solidarity with my no buy brethren. Of the month, of the month. So I can buy, I can not buy something for eight days, I think. And now a word from our sponsor, Indeed. Neil, I'm finally adopting AI. Sudden change of heart around technology? Nope. AI is the name of a very mean kitten I found outside my apartment. Well, in less bitey news, we're here at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.

2:16And Indeed is here too, diving into things like how AI is transforming jobs, skills, and employer adoption. Indeed, we'll be sharing real-time insights like that into the global labor market. and how leaders can navigate the workforce challenges and opportunities ahead.

2:29Neal Freyman:Indeed's helping business leaders and hiring professionals dive into these perspectives through Indeed's Global Labor Market and Workforce Trends Report. This report also includes where job opportunities are growing, where skill shortages and mismatches could impact business performance, and how immigration patterns are shaping workforce capacity. Together, these insights help leaders prepare for what's next and make better workforce decisions grounded in real-time data. Learn more at Indeed.com slash Davos. That's Indeed.com slash Davos. There's something about some fresh Alpine air that makes cooler heads prevail.

3:04Neal Freyman:Trump's aspirations to acquire Greenland took a chill pill in Davos as he announced that he had reached a framework of a future deal for Greenland with NATO's head at the World Economic Forum. That sound you hear is Wall Street breathing a huge sigh of relief because tacos are back on the menu. The taco trade, aka Trump always chickens out, roared back to life. The announcement of the handshake agreement helped markets climb out of the dip they experienced earlier in the week that was fueled by fears of growing EU and US tension and the threat of new tariffs on seven European countries. Think back to Tuesday.

3:38Neal Freyman:Europe was readying its so-called tariff bazooka for the retaliatory punch of blocking US goods and services from the lucrative EU market, while US bonds were spiking and the dollar was falling. But post Greenland announcement, the 10-year U.S. bond yield chilled out a little, the dollar index jumped, and stocks made a nice recovery. Neal, zooming out a little bit, Greenland was certainly a major theme at Davos this year, but far from the only one. We also had Mark Carney, Canada's PM, talking about the end of rules-based order, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink warning of AI's power to increase wealth inequality, and Jamie Dimon railing against a proposed 10 % cap on credit card interest rates.

4:15Neal Freyman:But let's start back at this handshake deal. What details do we even have about it? Yeah, we have very few details. It's certainly a concept of a framework of a deal that will be negotiated in the future. That said, there are a few rumors that have filtered out of these officials, as reported by the New York Times. It seems like these discussions will center around Denmark, potentially giving the U.S. sovereignty over small pockets of Greenland, where the U.S. could build military bases. There's a model for this. The UK has some bases in Cyprus that are regarded as British territory. So look out for that.

4:49I should mention that Space Force already has a base in Greenland. There also is discussions going to be about Greenland's mineral resources, because in addition to the national security implications of this region of the Arctic, Trump also wants access to the rare earth minerals that are potentially untapped in Greenland. We just don't know a lot about them because it's very inhospitable territory. But potentially these negotiations could include the U.S. receiving a right of first refusal on investments in Greenland's mineral resources. Trump said he's going to release the details soon. So, of course, you know, who knows what what the actual details would be.

5:23But I want to zoom out to broader U.S.-EU tensions here. And it still seems like they are quite high. That's been a theme at Davos. Howard Lutnick, who's the Commerce Secretary, was giving a speech at the USA House, which has been the hotspot here in Davos this week. And Christine Lagarde, who's the European Central Bank president, was there. And Howard Lutnick just starts bashing Europe's economic policies and just going in on Europe. And apparently she just got up and left. And so that's maybe the distillation of how things are going between the United States and Europe this week.

5:55Neal Freyman:That's an awkward dinner. I can't remember the last dinner I got up and left from. But perhaps the most talked about speech at Davos wasn't even Trump's speech yesterday. it was PM, Canadians PM, Mark Carney, who overall kind of was the topic de jour outside of Trump. The overall vibe that we're living through right now, according to Carney, is an end of an era, the end of American hegemony. He called the current phase a rupture and went on to say, every day we're reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.

6:28Neal Freyman:The allusion to this great power rivalry is a US-China feud. And Carney also inserted Canada into the middle of that recently. Canada and China struck an initial deal back on Friday that will slash tariffs on electric vehicles as both of the countries promised to tear down their trade barriers. So Canada is cozying up to China right as the world is rupturing from the US. So amongst everything else going on here, it looks like Carney has found a way to make probably the second most headlines after Trump. Yeah, he said the middle powers must act together because if we're not on the table, were on the menu.

7:01Maybe that's not a dinner you get up from. Let's talk about Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon is the JP Morgan CEO, biggest bank in the United States. He gave a talk. He was on a panel and said some very newsy things. He was asked particularly about this 10 % interest rate cap on credit cards that Trump has proposed. And Dimon's pretty much refrained from criticizing Trump. But he did call this 10 % cap on interest rates an economic disaster. He said that the cap would potentially strip credit from 80 % of Americans. He said, my bank is gonna be doing just fine. Like we'll weather the storm. We have a ton of money, same with other Wall Street banks, but it really will hit Main Street restaurants, retailers, travel companies, and municipalities.

7:42He said people will miss their water payments. He did suggest the idea kind of tongue in cheek that they should try out this experiment in Vermont and Massachusetts and see how it goes. Those two states are helmed at the Senator position by you have Bernie Sanders in Vermont and Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts. Those are the two senators that have really floated this idea. It shows that the progressive wing and President Trump have similar populist economic policies.

8:08Neal Freyman:And then finally, returning to America for a second, another thing that may be boosting some market confidence is the fact that the Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared likely to block Trump's from immediately firing the Democrat appointed Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve Board. That's been something that's been percolating in the background here because basically, people are afraid that this shows Trump is exerting a greater influence over the central bank that guides the economy. And the fact that the Supreme Court justices were pretty unanimously skeptical of this gave markets another little boost coming into this morning, because it does look like central bank integrity is being upheld at the highest court.

8:45Yeah, it looks like Lisa Cook will keep her job for now. Moving on to more prosaic matters. We've got a good old CEO beef, the corporate bosses in question, Elon Musk and Michael O 'Leary, the Irishman who leads Ryanair, Europe's largest budget airline. These two started going at it last week when O 'Leary said that his airline would not install Elon's Starlink Wi-Fi on its fleet of planes because the antenna you need to beam Wi-Fi to passengers would increase drag and cost Ryanair an extra$250 million in fuel costs a year. Elon could not let this go, saying O 'Leary was misinformed. Then O 'Leary went all in, saying that Musk knows nothing about flight or drag and called his ex-platform a cesspit.

9:26The floodgates were open. Musk called O 'Leary an utter idiot and urged for his firing. After a few more barbs of each of these guys calling each other idiots, Musk polled his Twitter followers whether he should buy Ryanair so that he could sack O 'Leary. TBD on whether a takeover offer will come. Toby, we're talking about two of the most outspoken brash CEOs in the game right now, Elon and O 'Leary, who once floated the idea of selling standing seats on his planes. Their social media spat may seem a little silly, but ever the marketer, O 'Leary has managed to turn this free publicity into business gold.

9:58Neal Freyman:Yeah. One thing here to note is that Ryanair's strategy kind of revolves around trolling. They are an extremely discount European area. They sell tickets for$20 one way. Their flights are about an hour on average sometimes. And so the customer base kind of understands this gimmick that they don't really care about their customers. And they have this very tongue in cheek nature on social media. I'm not sure if Elon actually knows that. Some people are saying, no, he's totally in on the joke. Other people are saying, absolutely not. He's taking this very seriously. Either way, it has been good for business.

10:30Neal Freyman:That's been the underlying thing here for O 'Leary. He said at a press conference on Wednesday that it is very good for our bookings. They rolled out this big idiot seat sale in recent days. And he says, we love these PR spats that drive bookings on Ryanair. So the bottom line is getting a boost from these barbs flying back and forth on X. Yeah, they launched this big idiot seed sale. They're offering 100 ,000 seats at about$20 a pop. And in the same press conference, he said that bookings have risen 2 % to 3 % in the aftermath of the social media spat between he and Elon Musk. So he said, O 'Leary said, I'm very happy to continue the controversy.

11:08If it helps to boost Ryanair sales, you can insult me all day, any day.

11:12Neal Freyman:Here's the deal, though. It's a big deal for Tesla shareholders again, because they've been through this rodeo before where Elon allegedly is joking about buying something on Twitter. In that case, it was literally about joking that he was going to buy Twitter itself. And then he actually did follow through on it. So I think people are getting like PTSD flashbacks. Tesla shareholders are going not again, not another side quest of him joking about buying a company and then maybe actually following through on it. There are some rules about who can actually buy a European airline, though. They have to, airlines based in the EU must be majority owned by someone from EU countries or some other European countries.

11:52Neal Freyman:So there might be some regulatory hurdles to Elon actually following through on his joking polls. But if I'm a Tesla shareholder, I'm going, gosh, dang it again. Can you just focus in, lock in for a little bit, don't joke about buying any other airlines. Moving on, despite pioneering the very concept of e-commerce, Amazon wants to turn back the clock to the days of brick-and-mortar retail, and its latest bet to find a winning store format is its biggest one yet. The Everything Store is bringing a massive big-box store to Orland Park, Illinois, after convincing the city's board of trustees in a Vogue this past week.

12:26Neal Freyman:But just calling this a big-box store feels like a gross understatement. This place is going to be gargantuan. The site sprawls over 35 acres. The store itself will be 230 ,000 square feet. That dwarfs competitors in the space, with the average Walmart store clocking in at just 173 ,000 square feet. It is big enough to fit nearly two average Costco-sized stores inside. Now, much like what your ex told you, size doesn't matter. It's what's on the inside that counts. And then inside of those giant walls, Amazon is creating a Frankenstein's monster. The space will be 50 % retail and 50 % fulfillment.

13:05Neal Freyman:The front half will contain your groceries, general merch like diapers and paper towels, and even some prepared food made on site. The back half will be what Amazon does best, fulfillment for online and in-store orders. It hopes that by smooshing together retail and fulfillment and dotting the aisle with in-store kiosks for online ordering, it will be able to combine its digital prowess and normal shopping in a way that other brands can't pull off. Neil, this feels like a very Amazon-y store. Well, Amazon has just tried just about everything when it comes to brick and mortar retail. They've launched physical bookstores.

13:38They've launched shopping mall kiosks. They've done apparel stores. They've done convenience stores. They even had their own Amazon supermarket chain. None of it has worked. Amazon Go convenience stores, there's still a few of them left. There's 14 locations nationwide, but that's less than half of the amount that they had in 2023. So this is just another attempt. They're saying, okay, we've tried everything. Why don't we just do the biggest concept yet? And maybe that would be the best opportunity because look, we are a mass market retailer on our website. We sell everything. These other stores have been maybe a little more niche or catered to a particular clientele.

14:13Why don't we just basically build our own Walmart and see what happens?

14:16Neal Freyman:I'm very interested about this digital and physical integration that they're trying to do here because these in-store kiosks allow you to basically access Amazon's e-commerce platform while you're walking around. So maybe you see this lovely sweater in front of you, but you don't really like the color that's on display in the physical store. The one I'm wearing right now? It looks great on you, Neil. It really brings out the color of your eyes. But if you wanted a different sweater, you can go to the kiosk, you order a different one, and then someone from the back brings it out and fulfills it right then.

14:42Neal Freyman:Also, maybe you're looking at dog food bags. I don't really want to lug this big bag to my car. You can have someone do curbside fulfillment from the back half of the store again. So it's very fascinating how they are trying to maximize convenience at every level, both the convenience of the delivery platform that everyone loves and the fact that they can have that convenience happen in a physical retail location now. That's why I called it an Amazon-y product because I don't know if any other stores are kind of combining them in the same way that they are. My question is why is Amazon keep trying this?

15:13They failed so many times. Why do they care so much about getting into physical retail? And even though a lot of us all shop online all the time, in-store purchases account for still more than 80 % of retail sales in the United States. So that's so much money being left on the table for Amazon as just being an e-commerce player. And then secondly, Amazon's customers regularly shop at competing big box retailers. So if they can convert those customers from Walmart, Costco, Target into shop going to an Amazon store, then that's a huge opportunity as well. Consumer intelligence research partners found that 83 % of Amazon customers have shopped at Walmart.

15:51and then basically all of Amazon customers buy groceries elsewhere. So there's gonna be a huge grocery component. There's gonna be a huge general merchandise component. And they're hoping, you know, somehow, I'm not exactly sure, it's all gonna come down to execution, is that they're trying to get, there's Walmart right down the road here in suburban Chicago. And there's a Trader Joe's, there's all these other big box stores. They're gonna have to try to get those customers to go to Amazon for some reason. And they're gonna, like, we'll see the design of the store and see sort of what compelling things that they can do.

16:18They're obviously gonna leverage data from Amazon Prime and try to do all these deals for prime numbers, but I really think it's going to come all down to execution.

16:26Neal Freyman:Field trip to Orland Park in our future, perhaps. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's numbers right after this. Time for our Morning Brew Daily Davos update with Lightspeed. We are joined by Lightspeed co-founder and partner Ravi Matra. Ravi, we've spoken to a number of founders in the Lightspeed portfolio. When you're looking at a startup to invest in, what's the fastest way you separate signal from noise? We look for founders who think about what we call the super cycle or the trend line and not the state of the technology today. AI intelligence is evolving and improving so rapidly, and that relates to some of the underlying exponential trends in the drop of cost of compute.

17:10Inference cost has gone down by something like 100x in the last year. the performance of AI computing, the ability at one third of the cost this year versus last year to produce the same level of intelligence. These things really mean that founders have to be focused on where the intelligence technology is going and not where it is today in the context of their idea. And if that doesn't compile in a way that we think is robust, we will not proceed.

17:38Neal Freyman:Thank you, Ravi. Super cycle, I'm going to steal that. Morning Brew Daily is live from Davos all week in partnership with Lightspeed. And be sure to head to our YouTube channel for special interviews with Lightspeed founders all week. We just posted one with the co-founder and CEO of K2 Space, Karan Kunjar, who is trying to build the biggest space satellites in history. Pretty crazy. Keep an eye out as we'll be posting more throughout the World Economic Forum. Neil, when's a good time to start working with a financial professional? Now. What about? No, Toby, now. Northwestern Mutual can match you with a financial professional who will meet you where you are and work with you to build a financial plan based on what's important to you.

18:17They'll uncover blind spots and find new opportunities to help grow and protect your wealth. Will they tailor it to my life and near and long-term goals? Yes. Give yourself the right financial start to 2026 with the right financial partner. Find a better way to money at nm.com. That's nm.com. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company. Welcome to Neil's Numbers, the segment where I share three stats from the week's news that will keep you warm and cozy ahead of this winter storm. For my first number, there's an industry experiencing a shocking revival, and trust me, there's no way you're going to guess what it is, chimney sweeps.

18:59I'm so glad Dick Van Dyke is still alive to see this. According to the New York Times, England's National Association of Chimney Sweeps has grown its membership to about 750 today from about 595 years ago. Multiple people are booking training courses per day, and there's 40 women members as well. The reason why chimney sweeps are in demand is that people are having more open fires in their home, and the British government recommends chimneys be professionally swept once a year to limit air pollution. The reason why people are having more open fires are varied. The Times says that higher energy prices, the increasing use of wood-burning stoves, and concerns around a hostile state like Russia taking out the electric grid have all juiced their popularity, and business is booming if you're in the chimney sweep business.

19:43For H. Firkins and Sons, which has been sweeping chimneys since the 19th century, they get about 70 to 80 calls a day in the winter months. Toby, I'm not sure how to say this. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Chim-chim-chir-ee, indeed.

19:57Neal Freyman:This is not the chimney sweeping of old, though. You're probably imagining someone very soot-cover, climbing up, or maybe even like the young orphan boys that used to do this back in the day. That is not what chimney sweeping looks like in the modern era, they use tools. Like they have CCTV cameras. They have drones that can help with the chimney sweeping. They have industrial vacuum cleaners these days. Like it's not just using a duster and just hoping for the best. So that is part of the reason too why maybe this industry is seeking revivals because it's a lot easier than it was back in the day.

20:29Neal Freyman:I would want to be a chimney sweep though for the crazy discoveries that happen because chimneys are not a place that you are often cleaning or looking into. And so sometimes these sweeps report finding some very juicy stuff, love letters between people, star-crossed lovers. They found human remains in some cases. Revolvers, guns are stashed up there. So just from that perspective, a curiosity perspective, I would want to get nosy and see what people are stashing in their chimneys. All right, for my next number, I'll introduce you to a piece of infrastructure that saved countless lives netting alongside the Golden Gate Bridge.