Welcome to Market Mood, reading this is kind of like ur daily little cheat code to beating the stock market news cycle. 🕹️

STOP TALKING ABOUT EGGS BRO 🥚

If you haven’t been paying attention, egg prices in the US have absolutely skyrocketed over the past few months, and everyone is talking about it.

Like seriously, if I had a penny for every time I read something about eggs over the past month, I’d probably be able to buy at least two dozen. 😅

Let’s digest…

The Backstory

For the first time ever, the price of a dozen eggs eclipsed $5 in January, an annual increase of more than 200%. But why?

Well, it’s more than just inflation. It’s a mass mother eff-in’ bird flu. A modern day chicken apocalypse. In fact…

the deadliest outbreak of bird flu in history hit the US last year, killing millions of birds and significantly disrupting egg supplies. To make matters worse, the biggest part of the outbreak coincided almost exactly with peak demand during the winter holiday season, and drove prices to their all-time highs through January 2023.

And as egg prices went up, the price of most other supermarket goods went up as well; in part because 1) eggs are a major ingredient for a lot of items, and 2) profit-mongering from large chains like Kroger & Walmart taking advantage of the high wholesale prices and sent consumer prices even higher.

Betty Crocker cried. Chicken Little was shaking in his boots. But as soon as the hype caught up with prices over the past few weeks… things changed.

The Back-to-Earth

Over the past two weeks, as soon as the entire news cycle caught up with the ‘Eggmageddon’ storyline, new data shows egg prices are finally falling back to Earth.

According to everyone’s favorite index, the Midwest Large White Egg benchmark, wholesale egg prices are now down 50% from their January peak as of this week. 

The egg experts (eggxperts) attribute the rebound to a reduction in egg demand due to last month’s high prices, and to an absence of new bird-flu since Dec. 20th.

Alongside prices, the egg-related news chatter is dropping quickly as well. Lucky for us. We can finally sleep soundly at night. 💤

In fact, after reaching an all-time high of ‘egg price’ mentions in news coverage exactly one month ago, egg mentions have now become a faint whisper in the news landscape, falling more than 60% since peak chatter.

Alas, the Eggmageddon hype looks like it’s officially over…

Which means that, after I publish this post, no one has any more excuses to say anything about eggs. At least until Easter.

THE GOOD NEWS

is that this new egg data is right on time to improve next week's monthly inflation report from the BLS (which is pretty heavily weights on the price of consumer staple foods, ie. eggs)

THE BAD NEWS

is that the lower prices kind of spoiled my aspirations of making a quick buck as a cross-border egg smuggler (kidding) 😅

NEWS NUGGETS 🥔

Top trending commentary about parsed from news coverage

Bullish News Snippets

🟢 | 📰 MarketScreener | 🗣️ Coty’s fragrance sales drive big earnings results…

“Coty saw strong momentum in Q2 and year-to-date in most of its key brands, with single digit to double digit revenue growth across CoverGirl, Rimmel, Max Factor, adidas, and Monange, fueled by improving shelf productivity, impactful innovations and pricing execution.”

🟢 | 📰 MarketWatch | 🗣️Kellog’s beats earnings estimates…

“Kellogg’s posted higher fourth-quarter earnings and sales than expected, led by a continued strong performance in its snacks business.”

🟢 | 📰 Investing.com | 🗣️Microsoft’s looks really sharp on Bing’s AI prospects…

“With new and attractive features for its users on the Bing search engine, MSFT’s AI-driven strategy is set to challenge the web search market by grabbing market share as users see increased benefits and a new user experience”

Bearish News Snippets

🔴 | 📰 InsiderMonkey | 🗣️ memester Ryan Cohen buys majority stake in Nordstrom…

“Activist investor Ryan Cohen has acquired a major stake in the luxury department store chain. Cohen reportedly plans to force Nordstrom to make changes to its board, considering its weak performance compared to rivals.”

🔴 | 📰 StockRegister | 🗣️ SunPower’s outlook looks dim ahead of earnings…

“SunPower is expected to release quarterly earnings on February 14th. On the technical side, indicators suggest SPWR has a 100% Sell on average for the short term. According to the data of the stock’s medium term indicators, the stock is currently averaging as a 100% Sell, while an average of long term indicators suggests that the stock is currently 50% Sell.”

🔴  | 📰 AlphaStreet | 📆 Disney misses earnings estimates on lower profits…

“The Walt Disney Company announced first-quarter 2023 results Wednesday after regular trading hours, reporting a drop in adjusted earnings despite an increase in revenues.”

🔴 | 📰 ZeeBiz | 📆 Alphabet’s chatbot Bard comes out with a big letdown…

“Alphabet Inc. lost $100 billion in market value on Wednesday after its new chatbot shared inaccurate information in a promotional video and a company event failed to dazzle, feeding worries that the Google parent is losing ground to rival Microsoft”

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.

SENTIMENT KEY: 🟢=bullish, 🌑=neutral, 🔴=bearish