🚀 Inflation is causing lower holiday spending

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Market Overview
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Year To Date Performances:

1. Inflation and the high cost of goods are significantly dampening holiday spending, with 41% of Americans planning to spend less this season. Nearly half of those cutting back cite high prices as the main reason, while even among consumers spending more, a growing share say they’re doing so because goods cost more, a sharp shift from past years when higher spending reflected rising incomes or economic confidence. Americans arer also expressing pessimism about the economy, with 60% negative on current conditions and the outlook, including a majority of Republicans. As a result, shoppers are gravitating toward online retailers, big-box stores and wholesale clubs, becoming more price-sensitive, more reliant on discounts, and increasingly burdened by rising levels of household debt heading into the holidays.

2. iRobot, the maker of Roomba robot vacuums, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it agreed to go private in a deal that will hand full ownership to its primary manufacturer, Picea Robotics. Picea will cancel roughly $264 million in debt in exchange for the company’s equity. The filing follows years of pressure from lower-priced Chinese competitors, heavy investment needs, and rising costs from new U.S. tariffs, including a 46% levy on imports from Vietnam that added $23 million in fees this year, after a $1.4 billion Amazon buyout collapsed amid regulatory scrutiny. Once valued at $3.56 billion during the pandemic boom, iRobot is now worth about $140 million, but says the restructuring will not disrupt products, app functionality, or customer support, and that other creditors and suppliers will be paid in full.

3. Thrive Capital has hired longtime Palantir executive Jim Siders to lead Shield Technology Partners, a newly formed IT services platform under its Thrive Holdings division. The move comes as Thrive deepens its ownership and operations of technology-enabled businesses. Siders, who spent more than 12 years at Palantir and most recently served as CIO, will oversee Shield’s strategy of buying stakes in small and mid-sized IT services firms and helping them scale through access to advanced AI and engineering capabilities. Launched in June with more than $100 million in initial funding from Thrive and ZBS Partners, Shield already works with seven companies and expects to generate over $100 million in revenue this year. The move underscores Thrive’s broader bet that pairing operational ownership with cutting-edge technology, including close ties to OpenAI, can unlock significant value across traditionally less tech-forward industries.

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