Zoom is worth more than Uber and Cameo is thriving: This is 2020

Me: Robot dogs, Brett Favre, zombie companies, O.J. Simpson's birthday...

Just another Tuesday in 2020. Let's get into it.

SIT. COLLECT DATA. GOOD BOT!

Want a dog without all the yuck of slobber, belly rubs and unconditional devotion? Well for the bargain price of $74,500 you can skip the adorable carbon-based variety and get yourself a (very originally named) Spot.

The four-legged agile robot from Boston Dynamics has up until now been used mostly by researchers. Now, any businesses can pre-order their own. To do what, exactly? According the company: "The combination of Spot's sophisticated software and high performance mechanical design enables the robot to augment difficult or dangerous human work."

CNN Business' Jordan Valinsky has more.

CAMEO IS PEAK QUARANTINE

Quarantine has been great for Cameo, the company that lets basics like you and me pay celebrities (we're using that term lightly) to talk to them.

Want to Zoom with Brett Favre? That'll run you $5,000 for 10 minutes. Lance Bass is a steal at $1,250.

In the bargain bin you'll find mostly cast members from reality shows, including "90 Day Fiancé," "Survivor" and "Real Housewives of Orange County."

We are sorry to fans of "Entourage" (for many reasons, really) but Jeremy Piven appears to have dropped out after allegedly charging $15,000 for a call.

For the celebs, Cameo is a quick and easy way to turn a tidy profit while doing very little work. Not so different from their pre-pandemic lives, but now they don't even have to leave their couch or put on makeup.

ZOOM: THE UBER OF QUARANTINE

Did you notice how I just casually used "Zoom" as a verb just now? That probably wouldn't have happened four months ago.

Zoom Video Communications is arguably the biggest beneficiary of the 2020 quarantine.

The stock has soared more than 250% so far this year. It's valued at $67 billion. To put that in perspective: Zoom is now more valuable than Uber.

Not bad for a company that's only a little more than nine years old, just went public a little over a year ago and is expected to generate less than $2 billion in annual sales this fiscal year.

DID HE JUST SAY BAZOOKA?

Stock markets about to face a reckoning, so sayeth one investor who has a pretty good track record for predicting financial disasters.

Here's just a sampling of what Scott Minerd, the global chief investment officer at Guggenheim Partners, had to say about the Fed's recent heavy-handed efforts to prop up markets:

"It's a troubling precedent that the Federal Reserve is going to sit there and continue to fund these zombie companies that don't deserve to exist.""There's a point where the Federal Reserve is going to have to pull out a bazooka ... And I think the option of buying stocks on the part of the Fed is on the table."Quick side note: The idea of the Fed buying stocks is not only unprecedented, it may not even be legal. But the Fed being the Fed, I'm sure they can get around that. On the economic recovery: "People have totally underestimated how long this is going to take."

Back in February, when US stocks were really on fire, he issued this warning to his clients: "This will eventually end badly. I have never in my career seen anything as crazy as what's going on right now."

We hear you, Scott! CNN Business' Matt Egan has more on his interview with Minerd here.

THE BRONCO IS BACK. HBD, O.J.?

If you were alive and near a TV in 1994, there's a good chance you spent June 17 watching police cars chase O.J. Simpson in a white Ford Bronco down a Southern California highway. (Life before streaming was a simpler time.)

That chase that made the Bronco synonymous with Simpson was 26 years ago today.

And in a bizarre twist, Ford announced this week that the Bronco is making its comeback after being off the assembly line for 24 years.

The date of new Bronco's debut? July 9 — which just happens to be the birthday of the Bronco's most notorious passenger.

The 2021 Ford Bronco was supposed to be released in the spring, but due to the pandemic, the launch was delayed. Ford says the timing was "purely coincidental." ( ... Was it, though?)

IN OTHER NEWS

We're shopping again: America's retail sales surged 17.7% in May — the biggest one-month surge since economists began tracking them in 1992. Cleared for takeoff: US airlines have been cleared to resume a limited schedule of flights to China after an agreement between the two countries to defuse what was shaping up to be a tense travel standoff.Travel trouble continues: Hilton Hotels is laying off 2,100 employees, or roughly 22% of its corporate workforce, as the lingering effects of coronavirus continue to depress demand for leisure and corporate travel.Smooth sailing on Wall Street: The Dow and the broader stock market rallied sharply on Tuesday.