There’s a big difference between playing armchair quarterback and suiting up for a real game.

No, we’re not talking about this Sunday (Go Birds), we’re talking about the US Federal Treasury. A year ago, newly confirmed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was critical of his predecessor Janet Yellen’s debt issuance strategy. On Wednesday, he stuck with it. More importantly, the somewhat boring technical decision has some very important economic implications.

Playing the Short Game 

Towards the end of 2023, the Treasury under Yellen adopted a strategy to fund the government with the sale of more short-term treasuries. Many on Wall Street credited this with helping to calm markets by providing a safe haven investment amid persistent inflation.

The short-term part is important here: The chance to buy three-year notes meant investors were not tied to bonds with maturation dates too far down the road. Investors care about this because of the ballooning federal budget deficit, which topped $1.8 trillion in the 2024 fiscal year and saw interest payments on the debt cross the $1 trillion mark for the first time.

Generally, the bigger the government shortfall, the more treasuries a government sells to obtain financing. Bessent, however, argued excessive short-term issuance amounted to a risky gamble too narrowly focused on propping up the economy in the short term. On Wednesday, at least, the Treasury stuck with the old strategy he doubted:

• The Treasury kept its guidance suggesting the sale of long-term debt will remain unchanged through much of 2025. When $125 billion is auctioned next week, it will comprise $58 billion of 3-year notes, $42 billion of 10-year notes, and $25 billion of 30-year notes.
• That’s the same amount of debt sold in the past several quarters by the Treasury under Yellen’s leadership. While perhaps not aligning with Bessent’s past views, it does stick to the Treasury’s longstanding pledge to remain “regular and predictable” and suggests the new secretary will, unlike his boss in the Oval Office, give notice of any major policy changes in advance, and not on social media. 

Looking Long Term: If Bessent does one day ramp up the issuance of longer-term debt, the primary concern will be added pressure on already rising Treasury yields — which benchmark borrowing costs across the economy and, as of January 24, had already risen nearly a percentage point since September. Any related increase in borrowing costs, of course, can lower stock valuations because the cost of capital goes up. Just like real quarterbacking, the Treasury has a vast and complicated playbook.

It’s a small world but Mickey isn’t reaching enough of it. To win the Streaming Wars, he’ll need to get out of the house more. And, no, the trip to Epcot doesn’t count.

On Wednesday, Disney reported relatively strong results in its latest earnings call, with a revenue beat and a significant profit jump. But look under the hood, and it’s clear that Disney’s streaming business has a real weakness in international markets — at least, compared with its chief competition. It’s both a problem and an opportunity.

A Whole New World (of Potential Subscribers)

Outside of streaming, things are pretty breezy in the Magic Kingdom: Animated smash Moana 2 fueled a strong quarter at the box office – you’re welcome – while Disney’s experiences unit saw revenue growth of 3% year-over-year, even as a pair of hurricanes battered Orlando. Heck, still-reigning CEO Bob Iger even said its linear TV business, long on a Titanic-esque trajectory, is “not a burden at all” and “actually an asset” (though he didn’t rule out a Comcast-esque sale or spin-off of some of its linear networks). Overall net income jumped 23% year-over-year to hit $2.6 billion — that should cover some extra fireworks at tonight’s Main Street parade in Disneyland.

But streaming, of course, remains “the future of the television business,” Iger said. And this quarter was somewhat rocky. While Hulu gained about 1.6 million subscribers in the quarter, Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the same period — though analysts had expected even higher churn due to a recent price hike. Disney said to expect another decline in the current quarter. The losses stemmed entirely from international markets (the service saw an 800,000 subscriber gain in the US and Canada), which underlines the company’s biggest problem:

• According to a recent report from industry research firm Parrot Analytics, Disney trails way behind Netflix and Amazon Prime in key international markets. Netflix has about triple the subscribers of Disney+ in Europe, Middle East, and Africa, while Amazon Prime has about double (Europe, with its high average revenue per user mark, is a key streaming battleground). 
• Netflix has roughly double the subscribers in Latin America, while Amazon Prime has about 26% more subs. In the Asia Pacific region, Disney narrowly trails its competitors thanks to its significant stake in regional streamer Hotstar — though Hotstar brings relatively lower average revenue per user.

Language Barrier: Unlike its rivals, Disney has mostly forgone developing or acquiring shows and movies from international markets, betting marquee franchises can translate across regions. Who needs Squid Game when you already have Star Wars? But that strategy may be starting to crack. Per Parrot, “demand share” for Disney’s original content — a proxy for the strength of its IP — slipped over 1% in 2024 compared with the year prior, as rivals ate away at its industry-leading position. The iconography of Marvel comics and mouse ears can only get you so far in 2025, it seems.

Normally France and Germany only align on where you can get the best spaetzle (it’s Strasbourg).

On Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that Tesla had experienced a 59% sales drop in Germany according to national vehicle registration data, and on Tuesday it reported that next door in France it had seen an even bigger drop of 63%. Now those figures might have you thinking sacré bleu, and maybe even questioning whether CEO Elon Musk’s political profile might have something to do with the sudden sales drop, but actually the answer lies in a far more foundational part of Tesla’s business — and even comes with a silver lining for the EV-maker.

Something Old, Something Leased, Something New

Tesla is the world’s biggest automaker by market capitalization, but it does not have the freshest lineup. Aside from the Cybertruck, the company hasn’t had a new mass market model since 2019 when it first unveiled its popular Model Y. 

That’s all supposed to change this year as the company is now selling its updated version of the Model Y, the Model Y “Juniper.” The vehicle went on sale in China first, and has only just arrived ready for purchase in Europe and the US. Felipe Muñoz, senior analyst at automotive market research firm JATO Dynamics, told The Daily Upside that a sales dip before a new model is a very predictable (and minor) bump in the road for a very popular car:

• “The Model Y is a hot-selling vehicle, the fourth top-seller in Europe in 2024,” Muñoz said. That’s not the fourth most-popular EV — it ranked fourth amongst all vehicles sold in Europe, per JATO’s data. 
• “Consumers just want to wait to get the latest version, and Tesla has also limited the deliveries of the old one,” Muñoz added. The Juniper version of the Model Y only went into production in Tesla’s Germany plant in mid-January, according to German newspaper Handelsblatt.

Firebrand: Exactly to what degree Musk’s ever-expanding political profile might be damaging the Tesla brand is still up for debate. A report from research and consulting firm Brand Finance found it contributed to a 26% drop in the firm’s brand value — though it also found Tesla’s aging lineup to be a major factor. Until the sales data for the Juniper are out, we won’t know just how ardently Europeans feel about Musk. Federal employees, on the other hand, have a pretty strong consensus about him already.