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This week’s biggest business news is perhaps that the U.S. federal government shutdown finally ended; however, that ending didn’t come without more than a few noteworthy concessions. Meanwhile, a beloved coffee chain walked straight into a strike on one of its biggest promo days, and a regional grocer found a way to turn literal loose change into both PR and foot traffic. In the background, the tech world reminded everyone that hype cycles come with fine print. CoreWeave, one of the hottest names in AI infrastructure, delivered blockbuster revenue but still saw its stock sink on news of a delayed data center. IBM, facing louder rivals in quantum computing, rolled out new chips and a faster manufacturing plan to reassure customers it is still a contender. And amid all of that, Target is telling workers to smile more, and Google is suing over scam texts. Here are the stories that defined the week in business. Marriott and Sonders Split Leaves Guests on the Street Marriott abruptly terminated its licensing deal with Sonder, and within a day, the short-term rental operator announced plans to liquidate and file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. The collapse has created chaos for roughly 1,400 employees across more than 35 cities, not to mention for guests caught in the middle of stays. Some travelers reported being told to vacate with little warning, and others were denied access to their rooms or forced to navigate partial refunds and small credits after hours while on hold on the phone. Marriott says its priority is minimizing disruption for guests who booked through its channels, but both companies have gone quiet publicly as blame for the failed partnership flies in both directions. Google Sues Alleged Smishing Kingpins Behind Fake USPS Texts If you have ever gotten a fake USPS or toll road text, Google says it has found one of the groups responsible. The company filed a lawsuit against 25 unnamed individuals it ties to a global phishing as a service operation called “Lighthouse,” which allegedly used hundreds of fake website templates to mimic brands such as Google, USPS, and New York City agencies. Google argues that the nefarious network may have stolen as much as a billion dollars over three years by tricking users into entering logins and payment information. The suit leans on RICO, trademark, and computer fraud laws, and aims to disrupt Lighthouses infrastructure, even if the operators themselves are based overseas and beyond easy reach of U.S. law enforcement. Starbucks Baristas Turn Red Cup Day Into a Red Cup Rebellion On what is usually one of Starbuckss biggest promotional days, unionized baristas at more than 65 stores across 42 cities walked off the job. Members of Starbucks Workers United say negotiations over pay, hours, and hundreds of alleged unfair labor practices have stalled, and they accuse the company of refusing to bring serious proposals to the table. Starbucks insists the strike has had minimal impact so far and says it is ready to bargain when the union returns. The union counters that it is prepared to escalate into the largest, longest strike in company history if leadership does not agree to a contract that improves scheduling and take-home pay. Hemp Becomes Collateral Damage in the Shutdown Deal To move a bill that would reopen the federal government, senators accepted language that could effectively outlaw many hemp-based products within a year. The provision bans unregulated sales of items containing THC, which even legal hemp can include in trace amounts, and could devastate a $28 billion industry built after the 2018 Farm Bill loosened restrictions. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul tried and failed to strip the hemp language, arguing that it threatened thousands of jobs in his home state and elsewhere. Shutdown Fix Sets Up a 2026 Sticker Shock for Health Insurance The same deal that moved the government toward reopening will leave millions of Americans facing higher health insurance premiums in 2026. Senators agreed to fund the government without extending enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits that currently keep exchange plans more affordable. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that individuals could pay up to $1,836 more per year, and families of four could pay up to $3,735 more a year, if the credits expire. Democrats secured only a promise of a future vote on an extension and will now have less leverage, while employers are expected to hike premiums on workplace plans as well, continuing a decades-long trend of costs outrunning inflation. Target Bets on Smiles and Service With New 10-4 Policy Target is testing a back-to-basics strategy for its in-store experience as it heads into the holiday rush. A new 10-4 policy instructs employees to smile, wave, and acknowledge customers who are within 10 feet and to actively greet shoppers who are closer than 4 feet. The initiative lands just ahead of Black Friday and at the start of weeks of rolling promotions that stretch through late December, a period when two-thirds of Americans say they will already be shopping. Behind the friendlier vibes, Target is coming off better-than-expected second-quarter earnings, but also traffic declines, DEI-related boycotts, and recent layoffs that trimmed about 8% of its corporate staff. CoreWeaves Data Center Delay Spooks AI Investors AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave reported staggering growth, with revenue up 134% year over year and a $55.6 billion backlog of future business, yet its stock slid nearly 10%. The problem is a delay at a third-party data center that forced the company to lower its full-year 2025 revenue forecast by about $200 million. CoreWeave says the affected customer has agreed to keep the contract intact, meaning the revenue should arrive in 2026 instead, and stresses that 41 other data centers remain on track. Even so, the market reaction shows how jumpy investors have become about richly valued AI names, and how quickly sentiment can swing when execution hiccups threaten hyper-growth narratives. IBM Pushes Back in the Quantum Arms Race With DARPA publishing a list of top quantum contenders, and with rivals like Quantinuum touting record-setting machines, IBM is working to remind customers that it is still on schedule. The company announced two new processors: Nighthawk for near-term quantum advantage experiments, and Loon for longer-term, fault-tolerant architectures backed by advanced error correction codes. IBM is also moving quantum chip production into a 300-millimeter wafer fabrication plant at the Albany NanoTech Complex, a shift that should double its manufacturing speed and allow for much more complex processors. Executives say the goal is to make sure both hardware and classical software tools are ready so that real-world applications can scale by the latter half of the decade. Pennies End, but a Grocer Turns Them Into a Marketing Win With the U.S. Mint pressing its final penny this week after an order from President Trump to stop producing one-cent coins, a regional grocer is trying to capture both coins and customers. Market 32 and Price Chopper stores in six Northeastern states are hosting a Double Exchange Day that will swap up to $100 in pennies for gift cards worth twice as much. For shoppers, it is a way to turn jars of change into a sizable grocery credit. For the chain, it is a clever way to stock up on coins ahead of a looming shortage.
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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months. Of the 50 largest metro area housing markets, 21 major metros now have more homes for sale than at the same point in 2019. Last year, that count was 13 markets. These are the 21 major markets where homebuyers have gained the most leverage: Memphis, TN; Austin, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Tucson, AZ; Denver, CO; San Antonio, TX; Orlando, FL; Nashville, TN; Tampa, FL; Oklahoma City, OK; Dallas, TX; Charlotte, NC; Seattle, WA; Houston, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Las Vegas, NV; Raleigh, NC; Birmingham, AL; Miami, FL; San Francisco, CA; and Portland, OR. Many of the softest housing markets, where homebuyers have gained the most leverage, are located in the Southeast, Southwest, and Mountain West regions. Many of those areas were home to many of the nations top pandemic boomtowns, which experienced significant home price growth during the Pandemic Housing Boom, which stretched housing prices beyond local income levels. There are some markets within Florida that have struggled with some inventory balance issues,” D.R. Horton COO Michael Murray said on the company’s October 28 earnings call. “Notably, Jacksonville and Southwest Florida have had some excess inventory, and demand has been a while coming to absorb that. So that’s kind of what you’re seeing in the current quarter’s results in the Southeast for us.” window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Once pandemic-fueled domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates spiked, markets like Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin, Texas, faced challenges as they had to rely on local incomes to sustain frothy home prices. The housing market softening in these areas was further accelerated by the abundance of new home supply in the pipeline across the Sun Belt. When and where needed, builders are often willing to reduce prices or make other affordability adjustments to maintain sales. These adjustments in the new construction market also create a cooling effect on the resale market, as some buyers who might have opted for an existing home shift their focus to new homes where deals are still available. In contrast, many Northeast and Midwest markets were less reliant on pandemic domestic migration and have less new home construction in progress. With lower exposure to that migration pullback demand shockand fewer homebuilders doing large incentivesactive inventory in these Midwest and Northeast regions has remained relatively tight, keeping the advantage in the hands of home sellers.
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E-Commerce
While Im happy to extol the powers of the written word, sometimes you need a little something extra to get your point across. Im not just referring to pictures, either, but also to annotations, flowcharts, and freeform drawings. These illustrative tools can be a powerful way to convey your message, whether by themselves or on top of an existing image. Allow me to (*ahem*) illustrate exactly what I mean, using a free tool that might end up being the image-editing, markup-magic-creating supplement you never knew you needed. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! The picture of productivity Next time you need to mark up an image or feel like rolling your own flowchart, remember this website: Excalidraw.com. Excalidraw is a web-based app that bills itself as a digital whiteboard, but it is actually much more than that. With Excalidraw, you can also import your own images and then insert arrows, boxes, lines, and textor create completely freeform drawingsall on top of them. Youll be ready to start drawing or annotating in just a few seconds. The site is free to use and doesnt require any logins. To start using Excalidraw, just pick one of the drawing tools at the top of the screen, then click and drag on the canvas to insert it. You can easily import any image into Excalidraw and then mark it up in all sorts of interesting ways. To add an image, either click the image icon orif youre using the site on a computer and the image is in your clipboardjust hit Ctrl+V or Cmd+V to paste it in. Use the Cursor tool to select items that you want to move or delete, and use the Hand tool to move around the canvas. Excalidraw lets you save works-in-progress as files on whatever device youre using. Once youre finished, you can copy the resulting image to your clipboard or export it as an image file. If youre an expert at editing photos on your phonethanks, perhaps, to my colleague JR Raphaels Android Photography Masterclassyou may wonder why youd need a separate app for annotating images. For one thing, Excalidraw works on any device, not just your phone or tablet. (Ive found it especially helpful when marking up screenshots for my own tech advice newsletters.) Excalidraw also supports illustrations without an image, so you can build a flowchart from scratch or doodle away on an infinite canvas. Lastly, Excalidraw has more powerful annotation features than your phones photo markup mode, with additional drawing tools and a Layers feature for moving elements to the foreground or background. Excalidraw’s annotation options are especially exceptional. Some extra tips to keep in mind when using Excalidraw (some of which will only make sense if youre using a device with a mouse or keyboard): Right-clicking on the canvas reveals some useful options, including a grid mode and a Zen mode that hides the toolbar. Right-clicking individual items is helpful as well, allowing you to duplicate, flip, or move items forward or backward in the scene. While drawing lines or arrows, you can connect them to the edges of a shape, and theyll stay connected even if you move the shape later. Use Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z to quickly undo edits. If you ever want to start from scratch, click the menu button in the top-left corner, then select Reset the canvas. (But consider saving your work first.) To save your creation as an image file, click the menu button and select Export. Youll see a preview of what your image will look like along with some extra options. (Of note: Embed scene includes some data in the image file to allow for future editing in Excalidraw.) You can then save the file (as a PNG or .SVG) or copy it to your clipboard for easy sharing elsewhere. Excalidraw.com is entirely web based, though you can install it as a Progressive Web App if youd like. The site is free to use with no ads, including the ability to save project files to your local device and export images. An optional subscription for $6 per month lets you save files online and access extra features such as presentation mode and team management. Excalidraw requires no sign-in, doesnt ask for personal information, and advertises end-to-end encryption for drawings. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
Category:
E-Commerce
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