Mark Sebastian

Last Wednesday a burger chain jumped 15% and got halted for volatility. Nothing had changed about the burgers. Wendy’s spent the year getting taken to the woodshed. Same store sales in the US fell 7% last quarter and traffic dropped more than 12%. The board cut the dividend by more than half and pulled its outlook for the year. They’ve closed 289 restaurants in six months. Every metric looked brutal. And when things look dead, that’s when the vultures come out. Roughly 30% of the stock was sold short.

Dear Trader, Crude is at its highest level in more than two weeks because Trump spent Monday threatening Iran and Oman. The 30-year Treasury is yielding more than it has since 2007. Futures are lower on both counts. More importantly, traders have spent three weeks talking themselves out of a September hike, and long rates climbed anyway. Jim Bianco has been poking at that all week and he doesn't have a clean answer either.

My younger son has a Nintendo Switch 2, and buried inside it is something wonderful for an 80s gamer like me. Nintendo runs a retro app called Nintendo Classics. Download it and you get 95 games from my childhood. The original Legend of Zelda, Kid Icarus, Kirby's Adventure, and where it all started for me: Super Mario Brothers. I've got to tell you, that game is still REALLY REALLY FUN. No 15 buttons to memorize, just smooth side-scrolling action and a jump button. Forty years on, it holds up.