NVDIA Earnings, Social Security Adjustments, and Macy’s Setbacks
- Social Security Adjustments – The Social Security Administration announced that the 2025 Cost-of-Living Adjustment will increase 2.5%. Similarly, the maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security taxes will increase to $176,100 beginning on January 1, 2025 (source: Social Security Administration).
- Exceeding Expectations – NVIDIA, a hardware and software manufacturer, reported $35.1 billion in revenue for the third quarter ended October 27, 2024, which is a 94% year-over-year increase. This beat preliminary expectations of $32.5 billion (source: The Motley Fool).
- Debt Dangers – Household debt rose to $17.94 trillion in Q3 2024, a $147 billion increase from Q2 2024. Mortgage balances rose $75 billion and credit card balances grew $24 billion to $1.17 trillion (source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York).
- Another AI Investment – Pyramid Analytics, an AI business analytics company, has secured a $50 million investment from BlackRock. Pyramid’s offerings are frequently used by the FDA, Deloitte, and Volkswagen to simplify data analysis processes (source: Reuters).
- Quittin’ Time – In September 2024, quit rates increased by 0.7% in Louisiana and 0.6% in Maryland. Illinois reported the only quit rate decrease of -0.8%, while the remaining states were unchanged (source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
- Questionable Accounting – Macy’s has delayed the issuance of its third quarter earnings report after finding false accounting entries totaling between $132 and $154 million in its delivery expense accounts. The retailer has started an independent investigation (source: Yahoo Finance).
- The Daycare Debacle – The National Database of Childcare Prices found that U.S. families spend between 8.9% and 16.0% of their median income on full-day care for one child, which ranges between $6,552 and $15,600. For perspective, the median cost of a year’s rent was $15,216 for the same reporting period (source: U.S. Department of Labor).
- Good Goals – Warren Buffett has donated another $1.14 billion of Berkshire stock to four family foundations, continuing his mission of giving away 99.5% of his wealth. To date, Buffett has donated more than $58 billion since 2006 (source: Reuters).
- Halting Hiring – Data from LinkedIn shows hiring is down 27% in IT, 32% in quality assurance, 23% in product management, and 26% in engineering (source: Yahoo Finance).
- Fight Night – The Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight was the most-streamed sporting event in Netflix history, reaching 65 million concurrent streams worldwide, 38 million of which were from the United States (source: Netflix).
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