This is the 200th edition of The Weekly. 🥳 Markets changed. Platforms changed. *Attention spans definitely did not improve. * And along the way, we learned a few things: showing up matters, hype fades fast, and the readers who open, read, share, and occasionally hit reply are the reason this keeps going.
Thanks for sticking with it, forwarding it around, and tolerating our tone for 200 Fridays. Now let’s get into it.
How One Contractor Bought MarginInstead of Working for ItGen Z Can’t Afford Homes.
**So They’re Buying Rolexes.****The Most Interesting Man in the World Is Back.**Beer Sales Aren’t (yet).From Opening Bell to No Bell at All:
**The stock market wants deli hours.****A 10% APR Cap Sounds Nice.**Here’s the Catch.When Does
AI Start Paying Rent?**And From Around the Web:**Shovel season, $300M rocks, and zero sympathy from space.
*by *
Most small business owners think growth means more leads, more people, and more noise. We’d argue that’s usually the slow way. Sometimes the smarter move isn’t selling harder. It’s changing how the business is built.
Over on the blog, I break down a real Credit Banc client who didn’t chase incremental growth. They bought it. By acquiring a business they were already outsourcing to, they pulled revenue in-house, tightened operations, and made the same projects more profitable without adding headcount or increasing marketing spend.
If you’ve ever looked at your P&L and thought, “Why are we paying someone else to make money on our jobs?” this one’s worth your time.
Some Gen Zers are knitting like retirees. Others are dropping serious money on mechanical watches older than their grandparents. Despite phones and wearables owning the time-telling business, **analog watches are having a moment. **Young buyers are chasing Rolex, Cartier, and niche upstarts, often skipping boutiques and heading straight to the online secondhand market. Instagram and TikTok tastemakers do the guiding.
The obsession took off during COVID lockdowns when people had extra time, spare cash, and nothing to do but stare at their wrists. At the same time, luxury brands couldn’t meet demand, which pushed buyers into resale platforms like Chrono24 and Watchfinder. Prices for hype pieces like the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and the Patek Philippe Nautilus doubled or tripled. Then the bubble popped in 2022.
Today, the market is calmer and more selective. Only certain models like the Rolex Daytona and GMT still command big premiums, mostly thanks to brutal waitlists. Pandemic-era buyers are generally still up, and the resale market is larger than ever, with more inventory and more deal-hungry collectors.
The numbers are real.** In 2023, insiders pegged the used-watch market at $27B**, with projected growth of up to 12% annually for the next decade. Much of that growth comes from 18–24 year olds, who are nearly twice as likely as other age groups to plan a luxury watch purchase in the next year. Watch media figures like Ben Clymer of Hodinkee and influencer Tristano Geoffrey Veneto (TGV) have turned collecting into a full-blown online fandom. The result: a flattened learning curve, obsessive documentation, and at least one guy on the internet who has cataloged every bezel variation since 1974.
The takeaway?Gen Z isn’t just buying watches to flex. They’re treating analog gear like a mix of hobby, hedge, and identity.
➡️ Curious how a centuries-old product keeps beating shiny new tech? Click through and watch the kids out-analog Silicon Valley.
He made index funds feel sexy. He looked normal in a VR headset. Chatbots would probably ask him for advice if they could. After a 10-year break, The Most Interesting Man in the World is back. This week, Dos Equis announced it’s reviving its iconic ad campaign, kicking things off with a spot during the College Football Championship, plus store displays and social pushes.
Yes, it’s the original guy. Jonathan Goldsmith, now 87, is reprising the role. This time, the brand is leaning harder into meme culture with live events, retail stunts, and even a LinkedIn presence for the character. According to parent company Heineken USA, the original campaign tripled Dos Equis’ brand size during its decade-long run. About 83% of people who remember the ads said they wanted them back.
The timing isn’t exactly festive. Beer sales have been soft across the industry thanks to higher prices, weight-loss drugs, and shifting tastes. Dos Equis felt it more than most, with U.S. sales down 8% in 2025. People are drinking less overall, which weirdly gives new life to the old line: “I don’t always drink beer, but when I do…”
Of course,** resurrecting an old campaign is risky.** It can look like creative exhaustion. And betting that an 87-year-old pitchman will resonate with drinkers in their 20s could be genius, desperation, or the result of a very long night.
Why we’re paying attention:When demand drops, brands stop chasing novelty and start reaching for what once worked.
➡️ Worth asking whether this is nostalgia done right or proof the beer industry needs a stiff drink. Read the full story and decide.
Twenty-four seven. **The pastrami never sleeps, and soon the stock market might not either. This week, the New York Stock Exchange said it’s building a blockchain-based platform that would allow stocks to trade around the clock. The move follows rival Nasdaq, which asked regulators last fall for permission to trade tokenized versions of stocks.
The NYSE’s plan centers on “tokenized securities.” Translation: ownership gets digitized so shares can trade nonstop, settle instantly, and be sliced into fractional pieces. The exchange’s owner, Intercontinental Exchange, is working with banks like Bank of New York Mellon and Citigroup to support tokenized deposits across clearing houses.
Tokenization has become the favorite buzzword in market plumbing. Beyond Nasdaq, platforms like Robinhood Markets and crypto exchanges Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken have all pitched tokenized versions of stocks, bonds, and even gold.
**Don’t cancel your weekends yet. **The NYSE still needs regulatory approval. And the Securities and Exchange Commission is currently grappling with the idea of markets that never close, despite being an institution that struggles to operate past 5 p.m.
What’s actually going on here?Finance wants crypto’s speed without crypto’s reputation, and regulators are being asked to referee a game that never ends.
➡️ If the market never closes, who’s really winning here? Dive into the details and see what 24/7 trading could break first.
Last weekend, **DT47 floated a one-year cap of 10% on credit card APRs. **On paper, it sounds friendly. In practice, it could scramble the consumer lending ecosystem. Credit cards are competitive because interest income absorbs risk, especially for subprime borrowers. Chop APRs to 10% and banks don’t magically get nicer. They get stricter. Expect tighter underwriting, smaller credit lines, and fewer rewards. Tier-B and Tier-C borrowers would feel it first.
Big banks didn’t mince words. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase warned a cap could shrink access to credit across the board. Brian Moynihan echoed the concern, noting that lower caps would mean fewer cards and lower balances. Translation: less credit, not cheaper credit.
When traditional credit tightens, demand doesn’t vanish. It reroutes. Personal loans and buy now, pay later products tend to pick up the slack. Anthony Noto says SoFi personal loans, priced around 9–13%, offer clearer terms than 20–30% card APRs and push borrowers to actually pay down their balances. BNPL is also gaining ground. Afterpay, owned by Block, reports that 63% of Gen Z consumers have moved away from credit cards, and 96% of BNPL installments during Black Friday and Cyber Monday were paid on time.
Even if the cap never becomes law, the spotlight matters. Scrutiny around high APRs is forcing consumers to look harder at revolving debt and giving alternative lenders a clearer pitch.
Read between the lines:Capping prices doesn’t kill demand.It just changes who gets served and who gets shut out.
**➡️ **If traditional credit starts tightening, waiting it out usually isn’t a strategy. If you want to talk through alternative ways to keep working capital flexible without playing APR roulette, book time with a Credit Banc advisor.
with Matthew R. Meehan
Everyone keeps asking when AI starts paying for itself. Most CEOs are still checking the mailbox.
A new PwC survey of 4,500 CEOs found that more than half haven’t seen real revenue growth or cost savings from their AI spend yet. Only 12% pulled off the rare combo of lower costs and higher revenue. Everyone else has pilots, experiments, and a growing collection of dashboards that look impressive and pay nothing. The companies seeing returns? They moved beyond pilots and invested in clean data, clear goals, and actually integrated AI into how decisions get made. Everyone else is still experimenting and learning an expensive lesson in patience.
If you want to understand why that gap exists, and (more importantly) how to avoid spending money on AI without seeing it on the P&L, that’s exactly what we dug into on Ep. 243 with Mark Andrews. The conversation focuses on where AI actually saves time, reduces costs, and helps businesses make better decisions without the gimmicks. ▶Watch it here.
**Snow Day Economics:**A massive winter storm isstretching from Texas to the Northeast. Flights will be canceled, roads will close, and someone will absolutely try to shovel in sneakers. If you’re on the East Coast and end up snowed in with nowhere to go, we’ve gotset to blanket much of the country this weekend with snow, ice, and Arctic-level cold,240+ episodes of The Liquid Lunch Projectready for a binge.*Consider it productive hibernation.*Check Your Pockets:Sri Lanka just unveiled a, casually estimated at3,563-carat purple star sapphire$300–$400 millionand allegedly the largest of its kind on Earth. It sat in a gem pile for two years before anyone realized it wasn’t just another rock.**Imagine finding out your “miscellaneous rocks” box just changed your life.***The luck isn’t the stone. It’s knowing what you’re looking at.***Space Is Doing Fine:**Earth is being a lot right now, so NASA dropped a newimage of the Helix Nebula to rJames Webb Space Telescopeemind us none of this matters. The glowing “Eye of God” slash “Eye of Sauron” is a dying star shedding gas and dust,quietly setting the stage for future stars while we argue in group chats. Space continues to be dramatic, productive, and unbothered.
