Hello C3 Family!

Weekly Rant - None this week, just a Survey

You all have listened to me rant enough, So I am giving you a break this week. Instead, I would really appreciate it if you took the 10 seconds out of your day to answer this one question survey. Trying to figure out how many people actually agree or disagree with C3's stance on the whole stock market thing. Thank you and God Bless!

Top Stories

• AI has powered the S&P 500 to new heights. The yearly inflation rate has dipped to 3.1% and Nvidia briefly passed Amazon as the 4th most valued company in the US. 

• The Music Industry is going Country. Country music streaming has grown 24% year over year through Q3 of 2023. Rapper Post Malone, pop star Beyonce, and many others are releasing country albums in the near future and financially it is the right decision. 36% of streams on Spotify for the top 50 songs were for country songs this past year (in 2016 that percentage was only 16%)

• Exxon Mobil is buying Pioneer Natural Resources for $60B, Chevron is buying Hess for $53B, and Diamondback Energy is buying Endeavor Energy Partners for $26B. Gas and Oil power is becoming more concentrated and more powerful. 
• Spot Bitcoin ETFs and passing time have helped BTC rise to over $50K for the first time since December of 2021. The Crypto industry was rocked last year with all the bankruptcies and scams, but time heals all wounds and interest is back up and keeps climbing.

•  TikTok is banned from being used on most US Government devices due to security concerns, yet a third of Americans under the age of 30 use TikTok to get their regular does of news according to Pew Research. Pres. Biden just created an account on TikTok in hopes of connecting with young people. The under 30 crowd helped elect Biden in 2020, but now that demographic is giving a slight edge to Trump in some polls.

• The cost of Cocoa is at record highs. This is due to a poor harvest in West Africa where 60% of the world's cocoa comes from. As a result, retail chocolate prices have climbed 17% in the last two years.

• The Superbowl set records this past weekend with over 123 million viewers. This makes Superbowl 58 the most watched broadcast of all-time. The NFL is still king among American sports, and no one is even close to dethroning it. This is why YouTube TV is probably the inevitable winner of the Streaming Wars, they got the sports.

• Israel chose not to listen to Pres Biden or Egypt when it launched air strike attacks on the southern Gazan city Rafah. The offensive move resulted in the rescue of two hostages that were captured back on the October 7th attacks. Pres. Biden and Egypt claim Israel did not have a plan to protect Rafah civilians. Does complete air superiority and warning of the attacks that are coming no constitute a plan to protect civilians?

• The Senate passed a $95B foreign Aide bill. The aid package allocates $61 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, $4.83 billion to U.S. allies in the Indo-Pacific, and over $9 billion in global humanitarian aid. Many Republicans voted against the bill claiming we should take care of the border crisis before helping our allies.

• Hallow the Catholic Prayer app aired a 30 second commercial right after the Superbowl and it paid off big-time. Hallow is now ranking above Netflix on the app store. Here is a link to the commercial in case you missed it. Hallow Spot