Unilever is on a self-care journey, swapping snacks for serums.

The $140 billion consumer conglomerate is contemplating selling its food business, worth roughly $33 billion, to spice-maker McCormick, worth around $14.5 billion.

The move would pull Unilever out of direct competition with packaged food leaders like Kraft, Heinz, and Nestlé, allowing it to to double down on its beauty, personal care, and home products—positioning it directly against beauty players such as Estée Lauder and L’Oréal. For McCormick, the transaction would mark the largest deal in company history.

While the companies aim to reach an agreement by month’s end, the deal may take longer to close given the scale mismatch, which adds complexity to the transaction.

The spinoff strategy

This is the latest step in a broader dismantling of Unilever’s food empire. The company has already exited several categories, including tea, spreads, and smaller food brands, and it spun off its ice cream unit last year.

The strategy reflects a deeper shift in consumer behavior: Demand is moving away from heavily processed foods and toward fresher and higher-protein options, trends accelerated by the popularization of weight loss drugs. At the same time, consumers continue to splurge on premium beauty and self-care products.

For Unilever, that means reallocating capital away from slower growth food segments and doubling down on higher-margin personal care products. Unilever’s management aims to generate about two-thirds of revenue from core brands like Dove, Liquid I.V., and Dermalogica, up from roughly half today.

What does this mean for investors?

While diversification once drove growth and scale was the priority, that’s now becoming a burden, as large, complex portfolios become harder to manage. Breakups were once seen as a way for companies to dump weaker assets, but that sentiment has shifted, and investors increasingly favor spinoffs because simpler businesses are easier to understand and value. In fact, a basket of recent US spinoffs including Sandisk, Qnity Electronics, and GE Vernova has outpaced the S&P 500 by the widest margin since 2020 in the first quarter of 2026, according to Bloomberg.

Some companies are taking advantage of this shift in sentiment: Madison Square Garden Sports is exploring a split between the Knicks and Rangers, Trump Media is considering spinning off with assets like Truth Social, and Honeywell is planning to separate its aerospace unit in Q3 to capitalize on strength in the sector.

That said, spinoffs have downsides, too: Smaller, newly independent companies can lose inclusion in major indexes, reducing demand from institutional investors. In some cases, parent companies also load spinoffs with debt, which can weigh on performance post-separation.

For Unilever, the move points to a clearer sense of direction, and a lesson for management teams: bigger may not always be better.—SY

🟢 What’s up

• Nexstar gained 1.69% as its Tegna acquisition officially closed following regulatory approval.
• Chevron added 0.14%, but that was enough keep its market cap above $400 billion, cementing its place among the 20 most valuable US companies.
• FedEx rose 0.93% on a Q3 earnings beat, driven by stronger US volumes, pricing power, and a robust peak shipping season.
• SolarEdge Technologies climbed 13.21% thanks to a Jefferies upgrade, as Middle East tensions revived energy security demand.
• HR company Insperity ticked up 7.7% after its CEO disclosed a sizable insider purchase of 205,000 shares.
• Planet Labs jumped 25.48% following better-than-expected fourth-quarter results.
• York Space Systems surged 19.17% as full-year revenue topped expectations.

What’s down

• Mosaic fell 9.96% after a Bank of America downgrade flagged a tougher outlook for phosphate fertilizer margins.
• XPeng dropped 8.36% despite posting its first ever quarterly profit, as a weak forward outlook overshadowed the milestone.
• Drone parts maker Unusual Machines slid 20.75% on a discounted $150 million share offering.
• Drone manufacturer Ondas dipped 6.28% despite raising its guidance.

Everyone has a side hustle these days. Some people deliver food, some drive Uber, and some sell billions of dollars worth of high-powered AI tech to China on the black market.

Three people with ties to Super Micro Computer were charged with conspiring to smuggle $2.5 billion worth of servers containing advanced Nvidia chips into China, which violates US export laws. And not just anyone: the wannabe Han Solos include company cofounder and senior vice president Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw, along with manager Ting-Wei “Willy” Sun and contractor Ruei-Tsang “Steven” Chang. Liaw, a US citizen, and Sun, a Taiwanese citizen, were both arrested, while Chang remains a fugitive on the run.

The scheme was to build Super Micro servers in the US and ship them to Taiwan, where Liaw and Chang allegedly set up a shell corporation in Southeast Asia to buy the servers and send them to China. Meanwhile, the trio set up fake servers at Super Micro’s Taiwanese facilities to fool inspectors.

Super Micro (which wasn’t named in the indictment) has placed both employees on administrative leave and cut ties with the contractor. Not surprisingly, the server-maker’s shares tanked 33.32% today.

Zoom out: In 2022, the White House imposed stricter export regulations on the movement of cutting-edge AI chips to China, including Nvidia’s B200 and H200 graphics processing units. However, sales were allowed through a government-issued license, and the administration’s reluctance to share this technology seems to be loosening. In December, President Trump allowed Nvidia to ship H200 GPUs to China, and chip purchase orders have begun rolling in.

The takeaway? If AI chips are heading to China soon anyway, maybe smuggling them over is one side hustle that’s not worth the risk.—JD

Retail traders love trading so much that they’ve started looking for ways to invest even when the market is closed. They’re especially eager to take advantage of recent oil market volatility, desperate to bet on the wild ebb and flow of crude prices in recent weeks.

They found a solution. It’s weird.

JPMorgan reports that retail traders are turning to perpetual futures—or perps, as the cool kids on Wall Street call them—in growing numbers. To do so, they’re using decentralized exchanges like Hyperliquid, where cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum are usually the assets of choice for speculative trading. But since the war with Iran began, oil perps have gained popularity among traders who want to bet on the market at all hours of the day.

Say that again, but slower

Perps are specialized derivatives that let traders speculate on an underlying asset without actually owning it (meaning you can bet on the future price of oil without needing somewhere to store all the barrels). But unlike traditional futures contracts that have specific expiration dates, perpetual futures can be held indefinitely so long as you can maintain the necessary collateral—making them a great way to speculate on the volatile price movements of crude without having to buy and sell new contracts as they expire.

Most importantly, you can trade perps 24/7, giving investors a chance to roll the dice at all hours of the day. And by using leverage, even traders with a small principal can realize outsized profits—or watch their money evaporate at the drop of a hat.

If that all sounds overly complicated and risky, it is—so much so that regulators restrict retail traders from using perps in the US. But investors have found a workaround thanks to the magic of cryptocurrency, which allows anyone to trade perps on decentralized exchanges like Hyperliquid that are based outside of the country.

By the way, perps aren’t the only way retail investors are playing the oil trade. Retail inflows have poured into pure-play oil ETFs ever since the war in Iran began, with everyday traders trying to capitalize on the headline-driven oil market.

Ready or not, change is coming

Perps are still a small part of the financial ecosystem, but that ecosystem is quickly evolving, and perpetual futures may soon play a growing role.

Earlier today, Coinbase announced the debut of stock perps on its platform, giving investors the ability to trade a select group of stocks and ETFs around the clock. Nasdaq has partnered with crypto exchange Kraken to tokenize stocks for 24/7 trading, and the SEC just gave them the green light to test it out. The NYSE, CME Group, and Cboe Global Markets are experimenting with the idea as well.

For now, perps are a peculiarity that are popular with a small subset of risk-loving retail traders. But retail traders remain a powerful force in markets today, and as demand for perps continues to grow, expect to hear more about them in the near future.—MR

• Tesla unveiled its new semi truck. It looks weird, but truckers love it.
• The Trump administration rolled out a new framework of legislative policy around AI, beating states to the punch.
• JPMorgan has a new monitoring program to track junior bankers’ hours in order to make sure they’re doing their jobs not overworked.
• Investors sold a net $24.78 billion in US equity funds this week, their largest weekly ‌sales since January.
• Amazon is developing a new phone, 12 years after its Fire phone flopped.
• If you can’t beat ’em, short ’em: The very banks that helped create the growing crisis in the private credit industry now offer ways to bet against the private credit industry.

Monday: There are no earnings worth mentioning, and the only economic report of the day is the delayed look at construction spending in January.

Tuesday: We’ve got both the S&P flash PMI readings for services and manufacturing activity in March, as well as a speech from Federal Reserve governor Michael Barr. Earnings reports to keep an eye on include GameStop and KB Home.

Wednesday: The only report on the docket is the import price index, and we’ll hear from Fed governor Stephen Miran. Earnings are still few and far between, but we’ve got a handful worth watching, including Chewy, Cintas, Jefferies, and Ondas Holdings.

Thursday: A tiny handful of earnings reports is headlined by Pony AI. But we’ve got a big slate of Fedspeak, with appearances by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson, as well as Fed governors Lisa Cook, Michael Barr, and Stephen Miran.

Friday: Just two earnings announcements of note: Carnival Corp. and TMC The Metals Company. We’ve also got the final consumer sentiment reading of March.