📺 Walmart's taking over your screens

What’s going on here?

Talk about a major cable bill: Walmart planned a $2 billion purchase of smart television-maker Vizio.

What does this mean?

Walmart’s no stranger to flogging TVs, but buying a whole flat screen-focused company isn’t exactly part of the day job. Vizio, known for its budget-friendly smart devices, has found a new side hustle in advertising and streaming. The company’s clearly been studying up on the art of subliminal messaging, selling advertisement slots that pop up every time a viewer turns on their flat screen or works their way through free video services. So of course, Walmart’s been tempted. Not only would the grocery giant take control of all that advertising space and the money it makes, but dossiers full of viewers’ exclusive data – like what they’re watching and when – would be thrown in, too. The television business would just be a bonus.

Why should I care?

Zooming out: Data equals dollars.

Walmart’s brand is all about value, meaning the grocery chain risks losing customers to competitors by jacking prices up too much. So if Walmart wants to pull up profit, the company needs to branch out from bread and milk. The advertising sector is a solid option, already bolstering the bottom lines of major firms like Amazon and Meta. But Walmart will need to tinker with the settings if it wants to catch up: 8% of televisions are hooked up to Vizio’s operating systems, compared to 17% for Amazon.

The bigger picture: Amazon’s not in the clear.

Nvidia is giving Amazon a run for its money – literally. The chipmaker just became the fifth-biggest business in the world, knocking Amazon off its perch. So far, Nvidia’s investors have been pledging their allegiance to a future run on artificial intelligence, and the chunk of change that would come with buddying up to the company that runs it. But Nvidia’s next results update, due on February 21st, could give them another reason to stay faithful.

What’s going on here?

Data out on Wednesday showed that British inflation stayed at 4% in January, eerily similar to December despite economists bracing for a jumpscare.

What does this mean?

Investors were caught off guard by sharp US inflation earlier this week, so they ramped up the pessimism ahead of the UK’s report and readied their “I told you so”s. But while economists and the Bank of England (BoE) expected prices to pick up faster in January than the month before, they actually rose at the same pace. That’s partly because services inflation – which tracks categories like education, culture, and hospitality to more accurately measure homegrown price pressures – came in at a slightly better-than-expected 6.5%. That has investors betting that the BoE will start cutting interest rates this summer. Mind you, they’ve hardly nailed their predictions this year.

Why should I care?

Zooming in: All the wage.

The BoE needs to make sure Brits’ paychecks are flattening out before touching rates, though. That’s because companies tend to pass higher wage costs onto customers, pushing shoppers to demand more pay, in turn stoking up spending and inflation. So far, not so good: wages without bonuses were 6.2% higher in the last quarter of last year from the same time the year before, more than economists predicted.

The bigger picture: The UK needs a rate break.

Now that energy prices are slipping, the BoE expects inflation to hit the 2% target as early as spring. Problem is, the central bank reckons it’ll soon head back toward 3%, as the impact of cheaper energy wears off. But even then, inflation would be squat enough to justify lower rates. And while the UK economy is only expected to grow by 0.25% this year, more manageable rates should push that up to 0.75% for 2025. Not a lot, but Brits will take it.