This is Nick. This is Jack. And we were heartbroken last week over the terrorist attacks on Israel. More Jews were killed in the last week than any since the Holocaust. And now the pain of a terror attack is morphing into the pain of war. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been forced to flee their homes as the Israeli counterattack against Hamas began. So many families were affected and innocent lives lost in just 1 week—there’s no other way to begin this other than by sharing how sad that feels.

We hope this newsletter is a bright spot in your day. Let’s make it The Best One Yet.

1) The North Pole of Spooky Season: Spirit Halloween

It’s almost the end of October—which means Spirit Halloween has risen from the ashes of the abandoned department store next to your local Trader Joe’s. Might be hard for us mere mortals to comprehend, but the god of last-minute Halloween costumes will bring in almost all of its $650M in annual sales during September and October.

Consider yourself warned: We’re T-12 days from Halloweekend (October 31 is a Tuesday, so we’re betting you’re celebrating early). Odds are, you’ll be panic buying a costume from Spirit Halloween in the next 11 days. Over/under you go with Barbenheimer?

The lore behind Spirit Halloween: The first Spirit popped up in 1983 as a women’s clothing store at a California strip mall. After a not-so-hot start to business, the owner took inspo from a Halloween store across the street and pivoted his biz into what we know today as Spirit Halloween. From then on out? The seasonal mega-retailer has been selling get-ups like “American soccer coach with mustache and sunglasses” that looks suspiciously like Ted Lasso every year since.

• Lucrative locations: more than 1,450 total.

• Chilling sales: brings in $650M in about 60 days. Now that’s a haul.

• Monster market share: Nearly 1 out of every 5 costumes in America are bought at the pop-up each Halloween.

Spirit’s Secret ➡️ Zombie Retail: It turns dead stores into the undead. 🧟 Spirit isn’t just in the business of costumes, props, and vampire dentures—it’s really in the real estate industry. Spirit takes zombie stores (stores that look like a storefront on the outside but are dead on the inside à la Bed Bath & Beyond) and possesses their bodies every autumn. The landlord will take a 3-month tenant over no tenant.

The Takeaway →

Spirit Halloween isn’t chaos, it’s calculated. Spirit’s stores may look disorganized, but it’s actually one of the savviest real estate brains in business—and it uses a 3-part formula to transform zombie real estate:

1. 🎃 Lock in a max 3-month lease for retail spaces over 5K sq. ft.

2. 👻 Set up shop near communities with at least 35K (living) people in a 3–5-mile radius.

3. 🧙 25k cars must drive by the location each day. No pop-ups in graveyards.

2) Microsoft’s Call of Duty Is Complete

Microsoft has officially closed its $69B deal for video game publisher Activision Blizzard in what’s both 1) the biggest video game deal of all time (+XP) and 2) the biggest Microsoft deal ever (+XP). GG, Bill Gates.

Pwned: After almost 2 years of going 1v1 with regulators over its proposed acquisition, Microsoft beat the FTC stateside and restructured the deal to appease regulators in the UK.

🎮 Microsoft’s new player: Activision Blizzard—it publishes hits including World of Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush (if you color bombs are more your thing). And it’s the biggest video game company outside Japan and China.

It’s the latest in Microsoft’s strategic shopping spree—and it highlights how diverse this $2.4T behemoth has become. Microsoft also owns…

• 🎮 Xbox (video games) → including the Xbox console.

• 👤 LinkedIn (social media) → has 1B registered users and is on its way to becoming the cool kid of social media.

• 🔎 Bing (internet search) → the leading challenger to Google.

• ☁️ Microsoft Azure (cloud computing) → lesser known than Amazon’s cloud offering but brings in a not-so-humble $30B per quarter.

• 💻 Microsoft Office (software) → which has double-digits sales growth annually. Reminder: Ctrl + S.

Turns out: Most of Microsoft’s business brands don’t include the word Microsoft.

The Takeaway →

Microsoft is the most valuable “house of brands” in the world. Apple is the No. 1 most valuable company in the world, but its products are all under the Apple brand (it’s a branded house). On the other hand, LinkedIn, Xbox, OpenAI, and now Activision Blizzard all live under the Microsoft umbrella, even if they don’t wear the MSFT logo (it’s a house of brands). That’s why Microsoft’s enormity is a surprise—because you recognize Xbox and Call of Duty, but you may not know they’re Microsoft.

On the pod today →

👖Costco sells more clothing than Lululemon or Ralph Lauren, but the CEO thinks selling clothing is like a drug. So we’re covering Costco’s shocking $9B head-to-toe clothing biz.

🌍️ With Israel determined to “destroy the rule of Hamas,” experts worry the conflict could escalate to involve other Middle East countries.

🌯 Chipotle raised prices for the 4th time in 2 years. Don’t blame the guac, blame inflation. RIP to the $7.99 chicken burrito bowl. #GuacStillExtra

📺 Comcast and Disney have investment bankers calculating the value of Hulu (spoiler: $27.5B)—Comcast could soon fork over its 33% stake in the streamer to Disney.

💊 Rite Aid has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to deal with slowing sales, a load of debt, and expenses related to lawsuits alleging Rite Aid enabled the opioid epidemic by oversupplying painkillers.

📉 JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon offered a warning on the bank’s Q3 earnings call: “This may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades.”

🛻 Ford says it’s “at the limit” of what it can offer the UAW as the strike expands to Ford’s largest plant.

🧑‍⚕️ Kaiser Permanente reached a tentative agreement with union members as 75,000+ Kaiser nurses, pharmacists, and other workers ended the largest healthcare strike on record.

♻️ Here’s a QR code that’s actually useful—you can scan items to see if they’re recyclable in your zip code.

💸 The Consumer Price Index (which measures how much prices change for…consumers) increased 0.4% in September, driven by rising housing costs.

🤷🏻‍♀️ An international student moved to Miami, Florida, for college…but ended up in the wrong Miami. She applied to Miami of Ohio, not the University of Miami in FL (unbeknownst to her). At least she went viral.

QUESTION →

If you two weren’t podcast hosts, what would your dream job together be?

ANSWER →

Movie producers 🎬

QUESTION →

What were the first stocks you bought and why?

ANSWER →

Jack: Ford ($F). 🚙 I thought it was cool that the Ford family still owns 40% of the voting shares—I wanted in on this family-run biz.

Nick: Shake Shack ($SHAK). 🍔 Because my wife and I had our first date there (sometimes you make an emotional investment for emotional dividends).

Do you have The Best Question Yet? Submit yours here.

And one more thing. Keep your eye out for the 3rd annual TBOY Pop-Biz Costume contest. Can you guess what we are going to be?

—Nick & Jack