🍪 The Pelosis are making bank

Morning, friends! It’s Bite Sized Beta, the tech newsletter that puts ice in your veins like Otter Pops. 

Sheeeeeesh.

If you've noticed something different about us today, it’s because we took this email to the car wash and ordered a little brand polish. 

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Alright, now let’s get to the good stuff.

In the oven this week:

• 🤑 The Pelosis are killing it in the stock market

• 🫠 Meta’s had a WEEK

• 🍪 5 bite sized cookies 

• 😂 Memes to start the weekend

THE PELOSIS ARE MAKING BANK

Imagine driving in traffic at rush hour, bumper to bumper. It’s barely moving and you’re stuck inching along with everyone else.

You look to your left and what do you see? 

A police car speeding past in the carpool lane, with just 1 cop in the car. 

Before you can decide if that's even legal, the cop has already muscled his way to the front of the line at the Cheesecake Factory. And by the time you get off the highway, he’s polishing off the last of that luscious chocolate oreo cheesecake.

Well, Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul seem to be the only ones enjoying that sweet, sweet cheesecake these days. 

They’re making a KILLING in the stock market, while the rest of us are busy trying to figure out how bad it really is to swap the 91 gas with the 87…

Ok, let me back up.

Since there are no restrictions preventing politicians and their spouses from participating in the stock market, Paul Pelosi has been trading stocks…. with pretty convenient timing.

Some of his recent trades:

• January: he buys $1M worth of Tesla calls right before Biden delivers plans to provide incentives that would promote EV vehicle production 

• March: he exercises $2M worth of Microsoft call options <2 weeks before it got the $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with AR headsets

• Now he’s coming under scrutiny for buying millions of dollars worth of Nvidia stock, weeks before the House votes on a $52B semiconductor subsidy to boost chip production. To make things more suspicious, Nancy Pelosi publicly came out this week backing the bill, causing Nvidia stock to jump.

They’ve made 3x Nancy’s salary on the Nvidia trade in just one month ($600K in unrealized gains vs. her annual salary of $210K). 

Ahh.. so THAT'S how one's net worth can be over $100M on a $200K salary.

Maybe Paul Pelosi knows a thing or two about stock trading, but we gotta say, it sure is interesting that his portfolio seems to cover all the stocks his wife has a hand in influencing 🤔

Meanwhile, Nancy’s argument is that SHE doesn’t own any stock since her husband does the trading. 

Uh huh… and does a married couple of ~60 years speak to one another? Does a bear sh*t in the woods?? Is there a mustache in Mexico??? 

TOODALOOOO

META'S HAD A WEEK

It feels like Meta’s been getting pummeled on all sides this week.

Let’s review the heavy hitters: 

Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian protested against the new Instagram feed that turns the whole thing into Tiktok Reels, its short form video feature. 

IG has been running tests in feed that force you to swipe up to view each post rather than allowing you to scroll smoothly. It’s also been prioritizing a ton of videos from randos you don’t follow.

We’ve used it, and can confirm - it’s whack.

The backlash got so much attention that Adam Mosseri, head of IG, had to respond.

Well, respond is the nice way of saying it. It was more like a swift beat down.

Here's what he said: 

“We’re going to continue to support photos. It’s part of our heritage. That said, I need to be honest: I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.” 

Translation: suck it up and deal with it, Kardashians.

Fighting words for Kim and Kylie, who have a combined 686 million followers on Instagram. Let’s not forget Kylie even once made Snap stock plummet 7.2% with just one tweet.

Tread carefully, IG… 

Meta reported its first revenue decline ever of 1% and a 36% profit drop in its Q2 earnings call this week.

Compare this to 2019, when quarterly revenue growth was ~30%. 

Ah, the good ole days.

What were the culprits of the drop? 

• Weak advertising demand due to the economic downturn 

• FB’s Reality Labs division, which burned $3B last quarter. Wow! 

• Ads in Instagram Reels. Zuck came out and admitted that showing users more Reels on Instagram has been hurting revenue since it doesn’t monetize as well as other formats. He says their goal is to eventually figure out how to make more money from Reels, so they just gotta push through til then.

The FTC sued Meta to block the acquisition of a VR studio that makes a fitness app. 

You smell that? Antitrust is comin’ for Meta’s lunch. 

But in this case, we’re siding with Meta. VR is still early, competitive, and fragmented. Plus, stopping the acquisition sends the wrong message to VR founders looking to build in the space.

Our prediction is that Meta still needs to acquire to win, so this is a bad sign for its metaverse ambitions.

Luckily, there was one bright spot in the week: Meta’s monthly active users grew 4% year over year to 3.65 billion people, a huge win for a company that’s pretty much run out of people on Earth to sign up to its products.

5 BITE SIZED TREATS

THURSDAY MEMES TO START THE WEEKEND

That's all, folks! See ya next week.

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