This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Here are 11 stories that were following today on December eighth, 2023. First, the markets jumped yesterday as labor markets seemed to be cooling. Layoffs were strongly in November, and your layoffs are twice that they were in 2022. Job earnings are also way down from some of the record high numbers. Second, the markets are a little bit up this morning as the market continues to digest labor news. Unemployment is still pretty low, but most signals point to a cooling labor market. Third, Elon Musk and Bob Iger are having their own little dispute. Bob Iger and Disney Canceles for advertising and acts. Elon Musk has basically said that Iger should be fired. It's great fun to watch the two be hemless fight over this. I tend to find Bob Iger of Disney to be an incredible smug, ego-maniac, but he's doing a pretty good job moving Disney back in the right direction. I do think that Bob Aiger and Ron DeSantis should lessen their combat. Maybe we both stay out of politics. They've gotten crazy with each other to Disney versus a state of Florida, Florida.

But overall, a must, Iger, ridiculous fighting, Disney isup 6.3 % year to date. Tesla is up 97 % year to date. Fourth X Twitter added 10 million people in December, the CEO said, so we'll see if that holds. Fifth Blue Lemon is down three % pre-market on a softer holiday forecast. Will is still doing overall. Well, I tend to love the sweat, but can't seem to fit right into the regular pants, although I'd love to. One of my colleagues at the Lyons, Burns team, seems to do well in them. Will is up 45 % year to date. There's another article today in Yahoo Finance. Elon Musk's ex-side show is subtly hurting Tesla. The media loves to throw shade on Elon Musk. Meanwhile, the car company that Elon Musk has built that people are always talking about falling apart, and at some point, they will loosen their advantage in electric vehicle market, but it's now worth more than all the other major car companies combined. To give you a census, Tesla is up 97% year to date and worth $771 billion. Gm is flat and worth $45 billion. Ford is down seven % and worth $43 billion.

Toyota is up 40 % and $256 billion. I think we could pile many more car companies into that and still not get up to the Tesla market value of $771 billion. This concept of constantly looking to throw shit on Elon Musk seems to be well overdone. The media's got to hate somebody they intend to hate him. But my God, he's fun to watch. Seventh, the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast was ranked number one this week in the Apple Business News category out of all business podcasts. Thrilled to see that. Here, we constantly try and teach and entertain. We talk about what's going on the market, what's going on in business. We'll, of course, throw our own commentary in it, and then periodically we'll have ridiculous, ridiculous side shows and discussions and episodes. Yesterday we talked about how college coaches should stop complaining. We, of course, love that discussion. We're also dealing with multiple other subjects every day and love the fact that people listen and tune in. Thank you very, very much for doing so. A story found today, the presence of Harvard, Penn, and MIT probably all ought to be fired. Outside agitators and calling for the killing of Jews or Blacks or any of the group ought not be permitted on college campuses or quite any place.

This concept of safe spaces has become completely turned upside down. Night is a quick discussion of the big retail pharmacy chains. Walgreens is up 7% yesterday, but down 39% year to date. Cps is down 21 % year to date. The test story following today, the six-bit payers year to date and what they're doing, United is the only one that's up. Cps, which is also heading it down about 21 %. Cigna down 22 %. Elevans down 7%, Elavon's down 7%, Humana down 6.23 %, and Centine down 9.47 %. Finally, 11th, a book that we've authored, which is essentially titled Blocking and Tackling: 60 keys to building a business and manage your money. It will be out on Amazon this week. My God, it's taken forever. The first self-published we hired went bankrupt. The second one has been a pleasure to work with. We promised the second edition will be better than the first edition. The first book in this subject, which is co-auth with Grace Kellerler, who's also from executive podcasting, is what I would call a can read. I promise the second book will be closer to a must read. The weaknesses in the first book, the first edition are fully due to me, but we'll get better.

But great fun writing this. It's really a collection of a lot of different thoughts on business and managing money. We hope that you enjoy it. Again, thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity Podcast. I'm Scott Becker. You could reach me any time to give me your comments at (773) 766-5322. Thank you very much.