How did your Super Bowl bets work out? Here’s the quick summary from Forbes on how ‘Merica fared, especially via digital/online platforms like DraftKings and Fanduel:
The Chiefs (+1.5) cashed in as a slight underdog and for moneyline bettors. The game total went ‘over’ 51 points. The Eagles were the most popular spread bet for more than 65% of bettors at the combined leading online sportsbooks of Fanduel, DraftKings, Caesars and BetMGM. But more bettors cashed in on the game total in the 38-35 high-scoring Chiefs win.
We talked about side/prop bets and, well, if you bet the Octopus, congratulations. And if you called the doink on a field goal – even more congratulations. If you bet the Tom Brady mention thing, well … I lost that one, too.
Here’s the latest on our auto insurance rates in Southern California (and nationally) via BankRate.com. Their research is vetted and worthy.
From the ‘Artificial Intelligence Desk’ we have a hype-tastic flywheel happening when it comes to online search. It’s Google vs Microsoft, kind of. Microsoft has little to lose so it’s coming hard at the monopolistic search engine that is Google. As in any good proxy war, the ostensible players right now are ChatGPT vs Bard, but you feel me.
Why it matters: one share point of the online search market is worth approximately $2 billion - in profit. AI is also likely to change the entire search world, specifically when it comes to software engineers (who will retrain themselves and get rehired) and cost for advertisers (which will likely rise, because someone has to pay for all that retraining).
As for the macroeconomy, we covered LA County unemployment (there’s work to be had, mostly for medical/health care and retail sales/mgmt).
Photo: Employment Development Department
In toto: the economy needs some inflation, some dynamism. Economies are like perpetual-motion machines (or, you know … sharks): they all need to stay in motion.
Inflation helps that motion – just not too much of it.
Join us next week for some more macro talk, where we separate the signal from the noise that populates (pollutes?) our news feeds.
No hype; no harm,
Jason