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|  |  | Friday, November 21, 2025 | |  | | Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, December is arriving on a discount rack, Nvidia is keeping the AI dream caffeinated, Walmart is booming for worrying reasons, and car buyers are gearing up for better
deals. | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | September’s jobs data beat expectations. Healthcare and hospitality led the gains, but a climb in joblessness and a downward revision gave policymakers fresh cross-currents to weigh ahead of the next Fed decision. | Walmart’s big quarter carries a warning. Revenue, memberships, margins, and online sales jumped, but the gains reflect a trade-down as strained shoppers abandon pricier retailers in favor of groceries and essentials. | Musk predicts work will become optional. He paired the claim with a showcase of his robotics ambitions, sketching a timeline of sweeping
automation that has outpaced his myriad earlier bold promises. | Trump Media keeps tumbling. The stock is down
36% this month (and 70% year to date) and hovering near record lows, wiping billions from the president’s holdings as crypto losses add fresh
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| | SHRINK-WRAPPED SEASON | The holiday season is looking a little pinched this year. Shoppers are walking in with less confidence and smaller
budgets, and retailers are meeting them with higher costs and thinner margins. The result is a strange, strategic December where everyone is pretending the season feels normal while quietly cutting around the edges — fewer items, shorter lists, leaner displays, pricier imports, and discounts pitched with the enthusiasm of a clearance sale disguised as cheer.
Consumers are sending every possible signal that they’re tired. A recent Deloitte outlook shows confidence at its lowest level
since the late ’90s, with planned holiday spending down about 10% percent as people trade down and wait for deals. Retailers see it happening in real time: Albertsons says customers are buying smaller versions of staples. Target is cutting prices on thousands of items. Aldi is marketing a Thanksgiving meal like a doorbuster trophy. Even department stores are improvising, with Nordstrom building a bargain playground and JCPenney hiring comedians to sell the good mood back to shoppers.
Tariffs are lifting prices on everything from smartphones to fairy lights. Import-heavy categories such as toys and décor are suddenly expensive enough that Costco scaled back the entire section. Hiring is at its weakest level in 16 years. Automation is filling gaps. Assortments are thinning. And the holiday season is landing exactly where the pressure points on both sides of the register meet: a consumer who wants to spend less and a retail sector that has to make less feel like enough. Quartz’s Alex Daniel has more on retailers cutting costs as fast as customers cut spending. | | BOOM — AND GLOOM | Nvidia spent Wednesday afternoon playing therapist to every investor who has sweated the words “AI bubble” over the past month. CEO Jensen Huang walked analysts through $57 billion in revenue, a $65 billion forecast,
and a backlog that reads like a GPU version of a waitlist-only restaurant, then dismissed the bubble chatter as, essentially, static. Wall Street inhaled his comments like a sedative. After the call, forecasts went up. Price targets climbed. Even the professional contrarians let themselves relax for a moment.
By Thursday afternoon, Nvidia went from early-morning darling to mid-day drag, and the major indexes drifted with it. The numbers were massive enough to quiet the idea that
demand is fictional, yet the market acted like something deeper remains unsettled. Analysts praised the fundamentals while also admitting that the entire AI trade now hinges on supply chains, power grids, hyperscaler capex, circular spending, and a handful of firms carrying most of the index’s weight. The quarter may have answered one fear and immediately put the spotlight on others.
Nvidia keeps proving the business case for AI, and the Street keeps flinching at the macro
scaffolding around it. The demand is undeniable, the pipelines are full, and the buildout is barreling ahead. The fragility comes from the world behind those numbers, where utilities warn about load, regulators eye concentration, and the same big buyers account for most of Nvidia’s sales. It’s why the stock can surge on Wednesday’s logic and slump on Thursday’s reality. Nvidia bought the trade time, but it didn’t settle the argument. For now. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on the quarter that proved everything except market stability. | | | SPONSORED | Keep Your SSN Off The Dark Web | Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. What happens then? Best case: companies target you
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