The lowdown

Here’s what you missed while you were living your best life:

• 🇺🇸 Biden pushes for congressional stock-trading ban. With just weeks left in office, President Biden is backing a ban on lawmakers trading stocks, a move aimed at boosting trust in government. Will it stick?

• 🚗 Honda and Nissan in merger talks. It feels like the end of a Marvel movie where historic rivals band together for the final battle. The two Japanese automakers are reportedly discussing a potential merger to compete with growing outside threats from automakers in countries like China.

• 🌊 Russia delivers first LNG shipment to Italy. Russian energy giant Gazprom has sent its first liquefied natural gas cargo from the Baltic Sea to Italy, raising questions about Europe’s energy dependence.

Featured story

Zillow’s Zestimates Are Distorting the Housing Market

Zillow’s "Zestimate" tool, once a darling of the real estate world, is making a mess of home valuations. In cities like Chicago, Atlanta, and Seattle, nearly half of these estimates miss by over 10%, creating pricing gaps of $40,000 or more on a typical $420,000 home. Add in the spectacular flop of Zillow Offers—where the company burned through $422 million in a single quarter flipping homes at a loss—and the cracks in Zillow’s once-pristine reputation are impossible to ignore.

This isn’t just bad math—it’s market distortion. Misguided Zestimates inflate expectations for buyers and sellers, throwing an already unpredictable real estate market into chaos. The public failure of Zillow Offers highlights the risks of trusting algorithms to navigate complex, high-stakes markets like housing.

This isn’t just a bad look for Zillow—it’s a warning to anyone betting on algorithms to handle real estate transactions. With home prices already volatile, these missteps highlight the cost of relying on tools that aren’t as accurate as they claim.

The content we're consuming today

Here’s what we’re reading this week:

• Tech Radar: Apple Maps edges closer to Google Maps on the web with its take on Street View. Apple’s upgraded web version of Maps is taking aim at Google’s Street View dominance, bringing slick visuals and a streamlined interface to the fight for navigation supremacy.

• AV Club: Ticketmaster’s hidden junk fees junked—for now. The FTC has forced Ticketmaster to suspend its controversial hidden fees, offering concertgoers a rare moment of transparency at checkout.

• Yahoo: Dow logs longest losing streak since 1978 ahead of Fed decision. The Dow has dropped for 11 straight days, its worst streak in decades, as investors brace for the Federal Reserve’s upcoming decision on interest rates.

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The bottom line

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