Only Costco members
will now be allowed to
enjoy their “inflation-
proof hot dog–and-
soda combo,” said
Garrett Snyder in the
Los Angeles Times.
Starting later this
month, the wholesale
club “will require an
active membership
(currently $60) to
order” at its popular
food courts. Those
have “long been a
destination for bargain
lovers,” where the
$1.50 price of a hotdog
and soda combo hasn’t
changed in 35 years.
And since many of
the food courts were
located outside the
store, people came
for the deals whether
they had a Costco card
or not. News of the
change in policy didn’t
sit well with some cus-
tomers, who viewed
the move as “classist.”
Others applauded
barring “random
nonmembers in our
Costcos!” A Costco
customer service rep
told Fox Bus i ness that
Costco had always
had this membership
policy, but would now
enforce it more strictly.A Costco beef over
hot dog dealsBUSINESS
Not everyone caught the stock mar-
ket’s record rally this week, said Jeff
John Roberts in Fortune.com. Just
before the Dow climbed nearly 1,300
points in one day, the popular broker-
age app Robinhood experienced a
“systemwide outage” hindering access
to “all of Robinhood’s apps and trad-
ing and banking services.” The system
remained down for most of the next
two days, a disruption “unheard of
in the brokerage industry, where outages that last
minutes are enough to cause a hubbub.” Some of
Robinhood’s 10 million customers pledged to take
their business elsewhere; others said on Twitter
they would seek legal advice. Robinhood blamed
the crash on “a surge in volume spurred by inves-
tors spooked” by the market’s gyrations.Ouch, said Felix Salmon in
Axios.com. Just last summer,
Robin hood was valued at
$7.6 billion “on the thesis that
bringing Silicon Valley’s dis-
ruptive norms to Wall Street”
would endear it to Mil len-
nials. But recent stumbles are
a reminder that “old-fashioned
trust worth i ness has its merits.”
In the fall, users discovered
a glitch in the system that gave them “infinite
leverage” on trades; then Robin hood was fined
$1.25 mil lion for failing to ensure that users
received the best possible prices. “The outage this
week is Robin hood’s worst blunder yet.” With other
brokers now offering no-fee stock trades, “it’s hard
to see” why customers would stick with it now.Investing: Robinhood kidnaps customer cash
Apple: Compensation for phone slowdowns
Apple will pay certain iPhone users $25 per phone to settle litigation
accusing it of intentionally slowing down older phones, said Jonathan
Stempel in Reuters.com. For years, customers had “contended that
their phones’ performance suffered after they installed Apple software
updates,” particularly after the release of newer iPhone versions. In
2017, the company admitted to the slowdowns, which analysts call
“throttling,” though Apple denied that it intentionally “misled custom-
ers into believing their phones were near the end of their life cycle.”
Under the proposed settlement, Apple could pay up to $500 million.
Waymo: Alphabet gets funding for ‘other bets’
Alphabet-backed self-driving car startup Waymo raised $2.25 billion
from outside investors this week, said Jennifer Elias in CNBC.com. The
extraordinary sum, from investors including Silver Lake, Andreessen
Horowitz, and AutoNation, is the latest sign that “some of Alphabet’s
‘Other Bets’ companies need much more capital than Alphabet is willing
to provide.” Last fall, analysts at Morgan Stanley cut their estimates of
Waymo’s valuation by 40 percent, because “self-driving car companies
have found wider adoption to be more difficult than expected.”
Shareholders: Twitter CEO under fire
High-profile activist investor Paul Singer is pushing to remove Jack
Dorsey as CEO of Twitter, said Peter Kafka in Vox.com. Singer’s firm,
Elliott Management, has acquired “about $1 billion worth of Twitter
shares” and wants to replace four board members with its own nomi-
nees, “who would then push Dorsey to leave.” Even as Twitter has
turned into an international cultural force, Dorsey’s tenure has pro-
duced lackluster earnings and a disappointing stock price. Dorsey also
runs a second company, Square, leading Singer to argue this week that
“Twitter would be worth more if it had a full-time CEO.”
Trade: U.S., U.K. turn to negotiations
The British government released its negotiating objectives for a trade
deal with the U.S. this week, said Mark Landler and Ana Swanson in
The New York Times, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressing
hope the countries can eventually swap “Scottish smoked salmon for
Stetson hats.” President Trump has said a U.S.-U.K. deal would be
“magnificent,” but talks may be hampered by Trump’s anger over the
U.K. agreeing to include the Chinese telecom maker Huawei in Britain’s
5G rollout. Officials on both sides have insisted that the dispute over
Huawei would not “poison” the trade talks.32
The news at a glance
AlamyAn app that snapped.QFemale-founded compa-
nies got just 2.7 percent of
all venture capital funding in
2019, for a total of $3.54 bil-
lion. That’s up from 2.2 per-
cent in 2018, but remains less
than WeWork alone received
in funding ($5 billion) in the
same period.
Fortune.com
QShares of Zoom Tech-
nologies (ZOOM) went up
96.4 percent last week even
though the company hasn’t
reported revenue since 2011.
Investors confused the stock
ticker symbol with Zoom
Video (ZM), the conferenc-
ing service favored by many
remote workers. ZOOM
went up 52 percent last year
on the day of ZM’s IPO.
MarketWatch.com
QEmployees at Goldman
Sachs left behind precisely
525 suits and 256 donatable
items of women’s clothing at
their old U.K. headquarters
when they moved into a new
office last summer.
Financial News (U.K.)QAmericans paid almost
$64 billion less in federal
income taxes during the first
year under the Republican
tax overhaul signed into
law in 2017. The biggest tax
cuts came for households
earning $40,000 to $50,000 a
year (14.5 percent decrease)
and those making between
$250,000 and $500,000
(14.4 percent decrease).
MarketWatch.com
QFederal regulators are fin-
ing the four largest wireless
carriers a total of $208 mil-
lion for selling the location
data of customers to third-
party aggregators, leading to
several privacy breaches. The
largest fine, $91 million, went
to T-Mobile for sharing data
with more than 80 entities.
The New York TimesThe bottom line