Good morning and Happy Festivus! This holiday, invented by Frank Costanza on Seinfeld, typically includes the traditional "Airing of Grievances." And if you're going to give Matty a once-a-year opportunity to vent, she's going to take it. A few of her grievances: - Kitchenware that you can't put in the dishwasher
- People who won't watch the funny TikToks I send them even though they are very funny
- GIANT BIRTHDAY DINNERS. No more, please. They are always too big and you have to sit next to someone you don't want to and everyone wants to split the check in so many different ways and also pay for the birthday person's food. It's hell.
—Matty Merritt, Jamie Wilde, Max Knoblauch, Neal Freyman | | | |  | Nasdaq | 10,476.12 | | | | | S&P | 3,822.39 | | | | | Dow | 33,027.49 | | |  | 10-Year | 3.682% | | | | | Bitcoin | $16,801.20 | | | | | Nvidia | $153.39 | | | | *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 3:00am ET. Here's what these numbers mean. | - Markets: Time to bring out the Mercy Rule for the stock market. Yesterday, stocks resumed their sell-off and the tech sector in particular took a big blow as investors geared up for more Fed rate hikes in 2023. Tech stocks are now on pace for their worst December since the dot-com bust in 2002, in case you wanted some historical context for how poorly things are going.
| | | | Twitter/@carolinecapital Sam Bankman-Fried is headed to his parents' home in Silicon Valley after being released on $250 million bail yesterday. The former FTX CEO will be under house arrest while he awaits trial for fraud—including allegations that he moved customer funds from the crypto exchange into his other company, a crypto hedge fund called Alameda Research. But he wasn't alone. Caroline Ellison, the 28-year-old former CEO of Alameda, pleaded guilty for her role in the massive grift this week, attempting to minimize her punishment in exchange for her full cooperation with SBF's prosecutors. She admitted she knew customer funds from FTX were being invested into Alameda to prop up its books. And the estimated amount is egregious: FTX owes creditors $8 billion and has lent as much as $10 billion to Alameda, per the NYT. Ellison is quite the character Since the implosion of FTX, Ellison has fascinated internet sleuths due to her academic background, quirky personality traits, and the tome of Tumblr blogs she's apparently written. Before Ellison had a rap sheet, her fun facts included being: - The daughter of MIT economists
- A Potterhead and self-proclaimed Ravenclaw
- Captain of her high school's math team and a math major at Stanford
So, how did she link up with SBF? They worked together at the finance firm Jane Street, where they bonded over "effective altruism," a trendy Silicon Valley philosophy about accumulating wealth in order to give back and help humanity (now seen as a front by some). SBF left to start Alameda Research and later asked Ellison to join him at the then-startup. Ellison kept a low profile as she ascended to CEO, but she did give enough interviews to hint at her Thanksgiving-level appetite for risk. "Being comfortable with risk is very important," she said, and separately, "Young people tend to be too risk averse." At times, Ellison and SBF were romantically involved, and that's not all they shared: SBF has tweeted about stimulant use at Alameda and FTX, and Ellison tweeted in 2021, "Nothing like regular amphetamine use to make you appreciate how dumb a lot of normal, non-medicated human experience is." Looking ahead…Ellison's guilty plea—along with a similar one from Gary Wang, FTX's former CTO and co-founder—further isolates SBF from his crypto Bling Ring as he faces up to 115 years in prison, if convicted of all eight charges.—JW | | SPONSORED BY E*TRADE FROM MORGAN STANLEY | | It's beginning to look a lot like…the most hectic time of the year. Between planning for holiday travel and watching your fantasy football teams unravel, it can be challenging to look beyond your busy schedule in the short term and prioritize saving for the long term.
E*TRADE from Morgan Stanley can help you stay in control of your road ahead—no matter how bumpy it may seem—and start saving for retirement ASAP. E*TRADE offers IRAs with no annual fees*, no account minimums, and the ability to choose from a wide range of stocks, bonds, options, and ETFs. Plus, you can earn up to $600 or more with code BONUS22 when you open an eligible E*TRADE account. Yup, the season of giving starts now, with some money heading in your direction. *Transaction fees, fund expenses, brokerage commissions, and services fees may apply. *Paid advertisement. | | Kamil Krzaczynsk/Getty Images  Not even a Hallmark movie could get you home now. Airlines canceled more than 5,000 flights Wednesday–Friday due to the massive winter storm barreling through the US during what's (normally) the busiest travel time of the year, according to FlightAware. The storm, which has already sent temps below 0 degrees Fahrenheit in 18 states, is causing dramatic drops in temperature across the country: Montana hit –50 degrees yesterday and New York City is expected to go from 53 degrees to just 14 in a few hours this afternoon.
 ByteDance employees were snooping on journalists. TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance said yesterday that some of its employees improperly accessed the data of TikTok users. And these weren't just any TikTok users—they were American journalists who were suspected of obtaining leaks about the company. This is a really bad look for ByteDance, especially as concern grows in Washington around TikTok's privacy guardrails. ByteDance's CEO admitted as much, saying that its "public trust" had been "significantly undermined."
 Predictions for China's Covid wave are dire. The country is probably experiencing 1 million coronavirus infections a day and 5,000 Covid deaths, according to British research firm Airfinity. The wave is so severe because much of China's not-at-all immune population is being exposed to the virus for the first time after Beijing recently pivoted away from its stringent "zero Covid" policies. Getting accurate Covid numbers will continue to be difficult in China because it scrapped most tracking of new infections and deaths caused by the virus.
| | Francis Scialabba The lengthy bidding war for NFL Sunday Ticket is over, and it's going to the house that Grape Lady built. YouTube secured a seven-year, $2 billion-per-season contract for the franchise rights—the latest streamer to be embraced by pro sports (Amazon began exclusively streaming Thursday Night Football this year). Starting in the 2023 season, YouTube will host Sunday Ticket in two ways: 1) as an add-on to YouTube TV or 2) as a YouTube Primetime Channel (which won't require a YouTube TV subscription). Pricing hasn't been announced yet. Sunday Ticket has aired on DirecTV since 1994. Other tech companies, including Amazon and Apple, had also been in negotiations for Sunday Ticket. Apple CEO Tim Cook even met with league officials and influential team owners like Jerry Jones and the Kraft family to win support. But after losing out to YouTube, Apple will just have to be satisfied with sponsoring the Super Bowl Halftime show. Zoom out: YouTube's long-term bet on its streaming service is a sign that streamers see live sports as a key part of their future—which makes sense, since sports accounted for 95 of the top 100 most viewed TV programs in 2021. But according to recent Morning Consult surveys, the younger generation's fandom may be decreasing: 33% of Gen Zers don't watch any sports (and 73% of those said it's because they aren't interested).—MK | | Francis Scialabba The Senate has passed and the House will vote today on a 4,000+ page, $1.7 trillion spending bill to avoid a government shutdown and fund government agencies through September 2023. We're going to skip most of the boring stuff that's in the bill (probably price limits on congressional white elephant gifts, etc.) to focus on some big updates to your retirement savings. Chief Government Affairs Officer for the American Retirement Association Will Hansen told the Washington Post that this is the biggest bill concerning retirement in 15+ years. So what's in it? - For starters, most businesses will be required to automatically enroll employees in 401(k) plans beginning in 2025.
- The required age people have to start taking money out of their retirement account will be bumped up from 72 to 73 in 2023, and then to 75 in 2033.
- Plus, older employees can now put more money into their 401(k) plans beyond regular contribution limits.
The bill also makes it easier for employers to establish emergency accounts for workers and limits penalties for employees who need to withdraw funds for emergencies from those accounts. To some, the makeover is giving more drugstore, less Sephora. Critics say the updates will disproportionately help wealthy people who don't feel pressured to withdraw money from retirement accounts. Plus, increasing contribution limits and opening more accounts = more fees collected by the financial industry, which heavily lobbied for these changes. Beyond retirement accounts…here's what else made it into the spending bill (and what didn't).—MM | | TOGETHER WITH VERIZON BUSINESS | | Excerpts from a business expert. Trying to make sense of all the business disruptions in 2022? Quit head-scratching and check out Verizon Business CEO Sowmyanarayan Sampath's new article series. He shares his insights on key challenges and imperatives and covers predictions across business segments for 2023. Read it here. | | Seinfeld/Sony Pictures Entertainment via Giphy Stat: The carcass of FTX is yielding a rich bounty. Partners at Sullivan & Cromwell, the law firm working on FTX's bankruptcy, will bill more than $2,100 per hour for some of their work on the case, per court filings. SBF was already skeptical of Sullivan & Cromwell, who represented FTX pre-bankruptcy. In prepared remarks for Congress (that he didn't deliver), SBF wrote that the law firm used "mentally unbalanced" tactics to pressure him to file for Chapter 11. But they won't be the only ones making bank: John Ray III, FTX's new CEO, is making $1,300 an hour. Quote: "The appropriate internal action will be taken." If you're wondering why Salt Bae, of all people, was celebrating on the field after the World Cup final, so is FIFA. The soccer organization is investigating how the internet-famous chef and other individuals gained "undue access" to the pitch following the game. Salt Bae may have failed to get Lionel Messi's attention during the post-game celebrations, but he did manage to snap a (now-deleted) photo with Elon Musk. Read: An interview with the translator of Sally Rooney's novels into Chinese. (Chaoyang Trap) | | The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew's Weekly News Quiz has been compared to closing your work laptop for the last time before vacation. It's that satisfying. Ace the quiz. | | - Tesla doubled its discounts on Model 3s and Model Ys in the US, which caused its stock to drop another 9%.
- The Taliban tried to defend its ban on Afghan women attending universities in response to growing criticism of the policy at home and abroad.
- Florida is the fastest-growing US state for the first time since 1957, per a new Census report.
- Also in that Census report: US life expectancy fell for the second straight year, to its lowest level in 25 years.
- US home sales plummeted a record 35% in November, per Redfin. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been nuking the housing industry with rate hikes.
| | Jigsaw: These baby owls are hangry. Friday puzzle Find a three-letter word that has one syllable—but when you add one letter to the end, the word becomes three syllables. | |  Bank account running low at the end of the year? Learn how to budget effectively all year long using Money with Katie's 2023 Wealth Planner. Shop here.
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| | | One solution is adding "a" to the end of "are" to get "area." | | |
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