Speaker
David Welch
Appearances over time
1 episodes
Episodes
1
Podcasts
Quotes & moments
Volkswagen aims to cut general overhead costs by €11 billion by the end of this decade as part of its restructuring plan.
Volkswagen's stock rose just 1.2% on the restructuring announcement, reflecting investor skepticism about execution in Europe's labor environment.
Apple raising prices due to a single component cost is what Bloomberg called an 'extreme measure.' The real driver: data centers gobbling up DRAM for Nvidia GPUs, leaving consumer electronics manufacturers to pay whatever it takes to secure supply. Micron says the crunch lasts at least 18 more months.
Memory chips used to be wildly cyclical — when consumer demand collapsed, memory prices crashed. That pattern is broken now. Data center demand for AI infrastructure has structural staying power that consumer electronics never did. Building more fabs carries the same risk it always did, but the demand floor is much higher.
OpenAI is leaning toward staying private until at least 2027. It's not just about market timing — the company believes certain strategic goals are more achievable as a private company. And OpenAI isn't losing sleep over the prospect of Anthropic going public first.
Volkswagen is facing pressure from every direction: tariffs in the US, fierce Chinese competition at home and in China, and a massive European industrial base that's politically untouchable. The company has been pushing this reckoning off for years. Now it's cutting 100,000 jobs and slashing €11B in overhead — and the market barely shrugged.
When US companies announce job cuts, stocks typically surge. Volkswagen's stock moved just 1.2% on news of its massive restructuring. European investors know these things take years, face union opposition, and often fall short of targets. Stellantis is the cautionary tale: years of integration work, still not a super-profitable unit.
Boeing landed a $3.62B order from China Southern Airlines for 777 freighters. Every order is good, but this one doesn't signal a broad China reopening. Airbus is still getting the majority of China's deliveries. What would really matter is 737 narrowbody orders — and those haven't come yet.
China used the 737 MAX grounding as political cover to freeze Boeing out of its market during the US-China trade war. Since then, China's GDP growth has slowed, domestic demand has dropped, and the homegrown Comac C919 is ramping — just much slower than expected with only ~20 deliveries last year.
Boeing is hitting 47 737s per month at mid-year 2026, right on target. Its supply chain is performing better than Airbus on a relative improvement basis — though Airbus still produces at higher absolute levels. For a company that was in crisis, this is a meaningful recovery signal.
JPMorgan's succession drama just got cleaner. Marianne Lake — arguably the long-time front runner — is out. Jen Piepszak voluntarily bowed out earlier. That leaves Troy Rohrbaugh, now running the consumer bank, and Doug Petno, now sole head of Wall Street operations, as the two finalists for the most consequential job in American finance.
Troy Rohrbaugh: grew up in Baltimore, cut his teeth on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange trading floor, low-key, obsessed with risk management. Doug Petno: smooth energy banker turned commercial bank chief, naturally charming, client-facing. Both are credible. But Petno is 61 — and if Dimon stays 3-5 more years, time isn't on his side.
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