Peloton Strikes a Deal With Amazon

MARKET MOVERS

• Peloton to sell gear and apparel via Amazon as CEO retools strategy. The company will be breaking with a longtime practice of exclusively selling products via its own website and retail stores. The move to open a storefront on Amazon’s sprawling online marketplace will help Peloton expand its distribution and make products more readily available.

• The US pending home sales dropped to the lowest since the start of the pandemic. Pending home sales, a measure of signed contracts on existing homes, slipped 1% from June to July, according to the National Association of Realtors. Compared to a year ago, sales were down 19.9%. Higher rates pushed the typical mortgage payment up by 54% from a year ago, according to the NAR.

• Home prices fell for the first time in 3 years last month. Home prices declined 0.77% from June to July, the first monthly decline in nearly three years, according to Black Knight, a mortgage software, data, and analytics firm. While the drop may seem small, it is the largest single-month decline in prices since January 2011. It is also the second-worst July performance dating back to 1991.

• Lyft to sublease offices as remote work lowers the need for space. The ride-hailing company said it would rent out parts of its office space in San Francisco, New York City, Nashville, and Seattle. Some 45% of the combined 615,000 square feet across those four locations will be leased to other businesses. Lyft plans to rent entire floors to others while maintaining separate entries for its own staff and operations. Read more here.

• The price advantage of renting in the suburbs has shrunk, according to Realtor.com. The price advantage of renting in the suburbs versus downtowns has shrunk by 53% from three years ago. While suburban renters used to save 12% compared to city dwellers in July 2019, they now pay only 5.8% less.

• Instagram copies BeReal with a prototype feature. Instagram’s imitation game rolls on with “Candid Challenges,” a prototype feature discovered by independent developer Alessandro Paluzzi on Monday. It’s an obvious copy of the current No. 1 free app in the App Store, BeReal. Candid Challenges would add the core functionality of BeReal to the Instagram app in the same way that Reels is essentially TikTok-in-Instagram. Read more here.

• Rents just set a new record high. Rents, which hit another all-time high of $1,879 a month in July, rose just $3 a month from June in the 50 largest metropolitan areas, according to a recent Realtor.com® report. And while they were up 12.3% in July compared with a year earlier, that’s down from a nearly 17% price spike seen in the spring. This was the smallest increase since August of last year. Read more here.
  

WHAT TO WATCH

• Apple confirms Sept. 7 launch date for iPhone 14. The company sent out invitations for a presentation titled “Far Out,” describing it as an in-person event at the Steve Jobs Theater at its headquarters in Cupertino, California. It starts at 10 a.m. local time. The company will also live stream the event on its website, continuing an approach it’s used since the pandemic began. The tech giant is expected to unveil the iPhone 14 lineup. Read more here.

• There will be another leg down says, Michael Howell. He thinks the economy is softening quite significantly. The data tells us that Asia is already in recession, Europe is pretty much getting there, and the US may be a month or two behind but it's certainly moving in that direction. The only debate is how deep that recession will be but it will definitely be a big earnings recession rather than an employment recession. Source(10:40)

• Morgan Stanley says the ‘smart’ EV industry is tech’s next big thing. Morgan Stanley says tech supply chains are about to see growth in the next big thing: smart tech features such as electric vehicle batteries, chips, and self-driving tech. Electric vehicles are becoming more popular, and the market is set to reach $287 billion by 2025. Read more here.