No one goes there anymore . . . it's too crowded

Early signals of back-to-normal breakouts, the ongoing mystery of labor shortages and global trade comes at you quick

Truckers, Ukraine and wordle have nothing to do with the latest Random Walk.

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Things we think

Coffee is hot! hot! hot!

New York City may be a ghost town but Starbucks is not. According to foot-traffic data from the newly minted unicorn Placer.ai, NYC starbucks(es?) are crushing it:

That’s +15% compared with pre-pandemic levels. If you recall, Starbucks actually closed ~15% of its NYC locations. So, fewer locations and more foot-traffic. That seems like a good thing for Starbucks. It’s also counterintuitive insofar as one would expect that fewer commuters would hit Starbucks(i?) the hardest, while locals would favor local coffee shops.

In terms of bottom line impact, Starbucks did beat revenue expectations, although prices were higher and most of the earnings focus was on China—the only reference to New York specific…