July 28, 2026

Presented By

Attention passengers! We’ve got a Sunday Special about all things transportation arriving in your inbox in five days, and we want to hear about the most memorable conversation you’ve ever had with a rideshare or taxi driver. Whether they regaled you with tales about the streets of Berlin on the night the wall came down or gave an elaborate account of their former gig as Taylor Swift’s bodyguard—we’re all ears.

You can commit the oral lore you received to writing here. Our favorite responses will be featured in Sunday’s newsletter.

—Abby Rubenstein, Sam Klebanov, Dave Lozo, Matty Merritt, Neal Freyman

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

The rise of microinfluencers
KFC’s history (and maybe its secrets) on the auction block
What a difference a quiet place to work makes

Markets

Nasdaq

24,932.08

-0.17%

S&P

7,413.18

+0.02%

Dow

52,210.08

+0.51%

10-Year

4.641%

-4.0 bps

Bitcoin

$64,811.99

+0.03%

Nvidia

$196.51

-4.99%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 6:00pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks were as mixed yesterday as your feelings about whether eating a salad is healthy right now. The S&P 500 and the Dow rose as oil prices fell, while the Nasdaq was dragged down by flagging chipmakers. Nvidia in particular took a hit as investors worried about its circular financing deals, giving Apple the chance to reclaim the world’s most valuable company crown.

Markets Sponsored by Cytonics

Investment subject to termination: Backed by Stanford and Scripps Research, Cytonics is developing the first and only potential cure for osteoarthritis. Join 7,500+ shareholders and invest before the window closes.

Not-so-wide web

You can now make money off your 500 followers

Illustration of person looking at phone screen with small people crawling over it

Niv Bavarsky

If your dream career involves a ring light, but you can’t get millions of people to like and subscribe, your moment has arrived. Big brands are increasingly looking to do business with small-time influencers, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Research firm Emarketer forecasts that US-based influencers will earn $21 billion this year and…

Around 45% of brand spending on influencer marketing will go to creators with less than 20,000 followers, compared with 19.5% in 2021.
Nearly 20% of spending will go to “nanoinfluencers” with less than 5,000 followers, compared with a measly 3.1% five years ago.

It’s not just brands with tiny budgets going micro: Companies like Target, American Eagle, and Soul Cycle are among those working with smaller creators—some with as few as 500 followers, per WSJ.

Why are brands thinking small?

Like everything suddenly becoming pistachio-flavored, you can blame it on the algorithm. Since most of what you see in your feed now doesn’t come from accounts you follow, sponsoring a creator with a big following no longer guarantees views.

Meanwhile, the little guys are driving engagement in a big way. Growth marketing firm ATTN found that microinfluencers average a 3.2% engagement rate, while those with 1+ million followers average a 1.1% rate. Accounts with big followings can generate significantly more revenue for brand partners, but they also cost as much as 18x more to partner with, according to Bloomberg.

But maybe don’t quit your day job yet: Evangelizing a brand to your small but mighty band of followers probably isn’t a shortcut to livestreaming from inside a private jet. Compensation for smaller influencers can often just be discounts, $10 gift cards, or some freebies, the WSJ noted. And unlike a steady but less glamorous office job, the size of your paycheck from influencing can vary each month. More than half of the 3,000 full-time creators surveyed by Influencer Marketing Hub last year said they earned below a living wage.—AR

Sponsored By Cytonics

Invest in Joey’s secret stuff

500 million people around the world suffer from osteoarthritis. While Big pharma has searched far and wide for a cure, they’ve found nothing.

Joey Bose, CEO of Cytonics, believes they’ve been looking in the wrong place. They should’ve been looking inward instead of out.

A2M is a protective protein already in your blood that Cytonics has made 200% more potent with their drug, CYT-108. They believe this is the first-ever treatment that potentially solves osteoarthritis at the source.

10,000 patients have received treatment with an earlier version of CYT-108 with zero adverse effects, and CYT-108 has already passed Phase 1 clinical trials.

7,000 investors are already on board, and for just a few more days, you can join them.

World

Tour de headlines

Paul Weaver/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

🍴Cracker Barrel CEO steps down one year after failed rebrand. Remember last summer when Cracker Barrel tried to update its logo and decor, and everyone got mad? Investors (both activist and not) sure do, and now the chain’s CEO, Julie Masino, is moving on. She’ll be replaced on August 10 by David Deno, the former head of Bloomin’ Brands, which owns Outback Steakhouse. Masino joined Cracker Barrel in July 2023 and was tasked with attracting new customers. But the changes to the logo were met with fierce backlash online, with even President Trump piling on. Although Masino rolled back the changes within days, the chain’s stock and sales took a big hit. However, there were recent signs of recovery, so the surprising announcement sent the stock down 2.38% yesterday.

📈 Chipmaker’s IPO bump makes it China’s most valuable listed company. CXMT, the world’s fourth-largest maker of DRAM, debuted on the Shanghai market yesterday and popped 466%. The soaring share price gave it a value of more than $487 billion, as investors bet on AI. That was enough to make it China’s most valuable listed company on its first day of trading. It still trails rivals like Micron and South Korean chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix, but Apple has reportedly been considering CXMT’s chips for devices sold in China.

📬 Trump asks SCOTUS to approve mail-in voting curbs before midterms. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court yesterday for an emergency ruling to let it implement an executive order targeting mail-in voting. The request to the nation’s highest court came after a federal appeals court over the weekend blocked the order’s implementation in 23 states that sued to challenge its requirement barring ballots from being sent to anyone not on an approved eligible voter list. The administration is seeking a quick decision, noting that any new policies would need to be active by August to be used in November’s election.—AR

JUST LET FORD DO IT

Ford wants its own Nike-like product drops

Ford

Ford is going to help make your car engine rev louder and whatever else you need to manage your midlife crisis. The US carmaker said it’s expanding its customization menu, offering customers more options to soup up their cars with performance parts and flashy accessories—as well as adding special-edition vehicles reminiscent of buzzy Nike shoe drops.

Yesterday, it unveiled a pink version of its Bronco SUV with a slew of features inspired by the hues of the landscape surrounding Salt Lake City. Costing an extra $13,695, it’s the first of several planned limited-edition cars that Ford’s head of customization told CNBC the carmaker hopes will generate the same level of hype as “Nike dropping a sneaker.”

Don’t DIY

Upcharging for custom cars allows Ford to tap further into the $53 billion aftermarket auto enhancements industry—while juicing revenue for dealers. The company is pitching the expanded options as a win for drivers, who now don’t have to manage modifications themselves:

Ford says half of its customers already ask for some form of customization, ranging from floor mats to turbo engines.
Unlike with post-purchase modifications, Ford is offering the usual three-year warranty on all specialty parts, and will finance them through its auto loan department.

But…some industry observers note that Ford’s push to add bells and whistles to existing vehicles might be a way to compensate for its lack of new models.—SK

Trivia with a bite

In honor of Shark Week, which started Sunday, who were the original five sharks on ABC’s Shark Tank?

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Answer

Barbara Corcoran, Kevin Harrington, Robert Herjavec, Daymond John, and Kevin O’Leary

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: evangelizing, meaning “spreading the gospel.” Thanks to Nina from Portland, ME, for opening our eyes to the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✢ A Note From Cytonics

This is a paid advertisement for Cytonics’ Regulation CF offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.cytonics.com/.

Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties. There is no guarantee of performance. Past performance does not predict future results. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal.

Phase 1 clinical trials are designed primarily to assess safety and tolerability and do not establish efficacy. Clinical trial results are preliminary, and there can be no assurance that future trials will be successful or that any product candidate will receive regulatory approval.

Written by Abigail Rubenstein, Sam Klebanov, Dave Lozo, Matty Merritt, and Neal Freyman

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