Ugly Quarter for Crypto and Tech Stocks Ends; No Joy for Ron Johnson

Tonight we’re closing the books on the second quarter of 2022, a period no one is likely to mourn. The stock market’s slide turned into a collapse. Bitcoin prices tumbled off a cliff. Layoffs took off. SPAC mergers fell apart. And even the lively business news event that started the quarter, Elon Musk’s investment in and subsequent bid for Twitter, turned into a quagmire of uncertainty.

As if to symbolize all the bad news of the quarter, former Apple retail executive Ron Johnson’s firm, Enjoy Technology, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization today in what was undoubtedly the least enjoyable moment to date of his long career. Enjoy, which Johnson founded in 2014 after leaving JCPenney (where he had stopped off for a couple of years after finishing his decadelong Apple stint), went public via a SPAC merger just last October. If this deal doesn’t warn you off SPAC mergers, nothing will. Shares of the company fell from nearly $11 at the time of the merger to 22 cents today.