← The Rundown
The Rundown
Amazon Acquires Globalstar to Challenge Starlink, Big Banks Kick Off Earnings Season
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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadod Mani and Today is Tuesday, April 14th. In today's episode, we'll break down the latest wholesale inflation report which came in shockingly cool. We'll also recap earnings from big banks and tell you why Amazon just bought a satellite company. Then stick around to the end of the show to learn an interesting stat about Meta and Google. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks are on a hot streak right now. The S&P 500 was up 1% on Monday while the Nasdaq jumped 1.2%. The S P is now sitting at the highest level since the Iran war started back on February 28th. And the NASDAQ has gone up for nine straight days, which is the longest winning streak since 2023. Now, Monday did start off in the red after peace talks fell apart in Pakistan over the weekend and President Trump said Navy was blocking Iranian ships from passing through the Strait of Hormuz. So there were initial concerns that things were about to escalate again. But then later in the day there were reports that the US And Iran are planning to have another round of talks to strike a deal. So following that report, stocks went up and oil prices went down. Oil is back below a hundred dollars a barrel as of this morning. Honestly, it feels like the market just doesn't care about the war anymore. The S P is now less than 2% from all time highs. We could be sitting at record highs by midweek in if this momentum continues. Personally, I was just happy to see software stocks get some love. Yesterday. The software ETF IGV jumped over 5% on Monday. Names like Oracle, Salesforce and Adobe all had big days. Now zooming out, the uncertainty overhanging the market is still going to be the impact the war is having on inflation. This morning we got another inflation report, the March PPI report which measures wholesale inflation and that was a 0.5% month over month, which is surprisingly cool. Economists were expecting a 1% jump because of rising energy prices. Now don't get me wrong, energy prices were still up in March. Gasoline at the wholesale level surged 16%, diesel was up 42% and jet fuel jumped 30%. But outside of energy, prices were basically flat. So that means that while the war did drive up our gas bill, it hasn't bled over into the broader economy just yet. And the big question moving forward is going to be will that hold? Overall though, I think the market is ready to focus on Corporate earnings as we enter earnings season and not on all the geopolitical drama. So the next few weeks should be very interesting. It's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with bank earnings. Three of the biggest banks in the U.S. reported earnings this morning. JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup. Let's start with JP Morgan. They're the biggest bank in the World Bank. They posted better than expected profits in Q1. Powered by a record trading revenue and strength in its deal making business. Equity traders at the bank posted their highest ever quarterly revenue, bringing in $11.6 billion through the first six months of 2026. That's a 20% jump from Q1 of last year and nearly $2 billion more than the previous record. You know, all the volatility in the markets in Q1 means more trading, which means more money for JP Morgan traders. Their investment banking business also crushed it with advisory fees jumping 82%. But despite the growth in their key businesses, JP Morgan lowered its full year guidance for net interest income, which is the money they make from lending money. On top of that, CEO Jamie Dimon emphasized that while the US economy remained resilient in Q1, he warned that the economy is facing increasingly complex set of risks. So it's classic Jamie being a slight downer. JP Morgan stock is down less than 1% this morning at the time of this recording. Moving on to Wells Fargo, they had a disappointed earnings. The bank missed estimates on both lending income and fee revenue. Now, Wells Fargo's trading desk also benefited from the market volatility with revenues up 38%. But their trading operation is much smaller than JP Morgan's. Wells Fargo stock is down around 6% this morning at the time of this recording. And finally there is Citigroup, the only of the three banks seeing their shares jump this morning. Citi posted its best quarterly revenue in a decade. Earnings per share jumped 56% from a year ago. CEO Jane Frazier said the bank's turnaround is entering during its final phase and investors are clearly buying in. Citi is the best performing big bank stock so far this year. So yeah, the big picture takeaway here is that these banks are thriving on the market volatility. Let's shift gears and talk about Amazon because they just announced that they are acquiring the satellite company Global Star. Amazon is paying $90 a share, valuing Global Star at around $11 billion, and the deal is expected to close next year. This move by Amazon seems to be all about boosting their satellite Internet business, called Project Kuiper, but it's now called leo. You know, it's a similar business to Starlink, where thousands of satellites in space provide Internet service to us humans down here on Earth. The problem for Amazon, though, is that they are way behind their goals and losing ground to Starlink. Just to give you some context here, Amazon only has around 240 satellites in orbit, while Starlink has over 10,000. Starlink also has 10 million paying customers, over $10 billion in revenue, and they seem to be the only profitable part of SpaceX so far. Now, buying Global Star isn't going to solve all of Amazon's problems right away. You know, Global Star's network is much smaller than Starlink. Its business is a bit different. You know, they mostly focus on connecting phones and devices in low coverage areas. And they're kind of best known for powering Apple's emergency satellite feature on the iPhone. I mean, Global Star only has like 48 satellites in orbit. But that's not the only reason Amazon's buying them. You know, Global star also has 800,000 mobile satellite subscribers, and they also own some pretty valuable spectrums, which is worth a lot these days. Remember, SpaceX agreed to buy E Spectrum for around $17 billion last year. So this acquisition for Amazon makes sense. And it shows that they're very serious about building out their satellite Internet service. Global Star stock is up around 7% this morning following the news of the acquisition. And it's also propping up other satellite stocks this morning like Iridium, ASD, Space Mobile and Viasat, which are all up around 2 to 3% at the time of this recording. Let's talk about some satellite stocks making moves today. Shares of Novo Nordisk are up after the pharma giant announced a deal to utilize OpenAI's technology to help boost drug discovery and get new treatments to the market faster. Now, this isn't Novo's first AI move. They've also partnered with Nvidia last summer to build a supercomputer specifically for drug research. And Novo isn't the only pharma giant trying to get ahead with AI. Eli Lilly announced a deal last month with Insilico Medicine, which is a Chinese based AI drug discovery company. So you're seeing all the big pharma players race to integrate AI into their pipeline right now. And it makes sense because typically it takes years to develop a new drug. If AI can cut that time down, it could be worth billions of dollars for these companies. Novo Nordisk shares are up around 3% this morning in reaction to the OpenAI news. Now, on the flip side, CarMax is getting crushed this morning after reporting earnings. Now, the headline numbers did beat expectations. Both revenue and earnings came ahead of Wall street estimates. The problem though, is that CarMax isn't growing. Revenue fell 1% year over year in 2025 and same store vehicle sales dropped 2%. This is now the fourth straight year of declining sales for the company. Now, CarMax did bring on a new CEO last month. His name is Keith Barr, and we'll have to see if he can turn things around. Now, CarMax didn't offer up a sales guidance for the full year, which is usually not a good sign. And that's why CarMax stock is down more than 10% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. For the first time ever, Meta is expected to pass Google as the world's largest digital advertising company. According to the research firm Emarketer, Meta is on track to generate over $243 billion in net ad revenue this year, edging past Google's 239 billion. Now, what blows my mind is how fast Meta's ad revenue continues to grow. Even even at this scale. Their ad revenue is expected to accelerate to 24% this year, while Google's growth is still flat around 12% growth. A big reason for Meta's surge has been the success of Instagram reels, which is now on pace to bring in $50 billion in ads over the next 12 months, according to the Wall Street Journal. You know, it wasn't too long ago when people thought that TikTok was going to destroy Meta's business. But Zuck does what he does best. He's the Michael Jordan of copying other companies core innovation. Now, 10 years ago, he ripped off stories from Snapchat and in as a feature on Instagram. And then in 2020 he copied TikTok and added that in as reels and it's been a huge success. And that's why Meta is on track to be the biggest digital advertiser on the planet. I do feel like Meta has dialed up the number of ads on Instagram. Maybe that's just me, but it could explain why their ad revenue is accelerating. It just might be more ads being shown to people. Let me know in the comments if you guys have noticed the same thing. Will. All right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode if you did and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. All that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes and we'll see. See you guys back here tomorrow.
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