Apple Guides to Record-Breaking Holiday Quarter, Amazon Posts Best Cloud Growth Since 2022 - The Rundown

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Rundown – October 31, 2025
Episode Title: Apple Guides to Record-Breaking Holiday Quarter, Amazon Posts Best Cloud Growth Since 2022
Host: Zaid Admani (Public.com)
Duration: ~10 minutes

Overview

This episode of The Rundown provides listeners with a concise, high-impact update on major market-moving news, particularly focusing on Apple and Amazon’s standout earnings reports and their implications for investors. Zaid Admani also examines developments from the Trump-Xi summit, Netflix’s stock split and acquisition rumors, and gives quick updates on Reddit and Roku, rounding off the episode with a relatable Halloween revelation about surging candy prices.

Key Discussion Points

1. Market Recap & Macro Sentiment

Major Indices Down:
- S&P 500 down 1%, Nasdaq down 1.6%, with tech stocks like Meta tumbling (11%) due to uncertain returns on massive AI capital expenditures.
- Lingering worry from Jerome Powell’s comments suggesting no rate cuts in December.
- (00:30) “Investors are starting to wonder how long these big tech companies can keep pouring billions of dollars into AI Capex without showing a meaningful return on investment.”

2. US–China Trade Developments

Trump-Xi Summit in Seoul:
- First in-person meeting in six years resulted in some trade de-escalation:
  - Rollback of US fentanyl tariff on China by 10% (from 57% to 47%).
  - Both countries agreed to pause shipbuilder tariffs for one year.
  - China to ease export restrictions on rare earth minerals.
  - Ongoing uncertainties surround chip export bans and TikTok.
- (02:01) “It does seem like tensions between the two sides have eased compared to what it was at the start of the month.”

3. Apple’s Explosive Earnings & Guidance

Q3 Performance:
- Revenues up 8% YoY to $102B; EPS at $1.85 (beats).
- Apple raises next quarter forecast, expecting 10–12% revenue growth — potentially the best quarter in company history.
- iPhone 17 lineup highlighted as a major driver of growth.
- (03:00) “Apple pulled off the earnings trifecta... Apple raised its forecast for this current quarter... making it the best quarter in Apple's history.”
Services Segment:
- Services revenue up 15% to nearly $29B (App Store, Apple TV, iCloud, etc.).
- Zaid jokes about being essentially forced into the Apple ecosystem for photo backup.
- (03:45) “At this point, I’m basically forced to pay Apple $10 a month so they don’t delete all the pictures of my kids off my phone.”
Weak Spot – China:
- China revenues fall 3.6% (to $14.5B), missing estimates due to Huawei competition and local dynamics.
- Tim Cook remains optimistic about a rebound.
Tariffs Impact:
- $1.1B in added costs, with Apple choosing to absorb costs rather than raise prices.
- (04:45) “I think Tim Cook doesn’t want any beef with the president.”
Market Reaction:
- Apple stock up 4% post-earnings.
- (05:00) “Solid numbers in the last quarter, and they're expecting solid growth moving forward.”

4. Amazon Blows Past Cloud Growth Expectations

AWS Performance:
- AWS revenues up 20% to $33B, fastest pace since 2022.
- AWS is just 15% of top-line, but responsible for 60% of operating income.
- Competitive threat from Microsoft Azure (+40% last Q) and Google Cloud (+34%), but AWS retains revenue leadership.
AI and Capex:
- Demand for AWS AI services outpacing data center build-out speed.
- Capex spend of $34B last quarter, expecting $125B for 2025 (outpacing Google, double Microsoft).
- (06:30) Andy Jassy: “Every bit of new capacity that comes online is being monetized as fast as they build it... That’s always a good problem to have.”
Other Businesses:
- Retail continues strong despite tariffs; advertising revenue up 24% to $17B.
- Total revenue up 13%, profits up 38%.
- Amazon’s prior underperformance (MAG7 laggard) reversed with strong results; stock jumps 11%.
- (07:45) “This quarter just reminded Wall Street that they are still very much in the game.”

5. Netflix Announces 10-for-1 Stock Split & Eyes Warner Bros. Discovery

Stock Split Details:
- Netflix (one of only ten S&P 500 stocks >$1,000/share) will split 10-for-1; more accessible price and option strategies, shares rise 2%.
- (08:10) “Stock splits don’t change the value of a company or your investment... but it is a psychological boost.”
M&A Rumors:
- Netflix reportedly exploring a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (HBO, Harry Potter, DC).
- Seen as a major potential content acquisition.
- (08:43) “Developing story. Definitely keeping my eye on that.”

6. Reddit and Roku Earnings Reactions

Reddit:
- Q3 revenue up 68% to $585M, profits up 400% to $163M, daily users up 19% (116M DAU).
- Stock up over 10%.
- (09:05) “Looks like the AI chat bots aren’t pulling away traffic from Reddit just yet, which is making investors happy.”
Roku:
- Q4 guidance weak: revenue growth projected at 12% (vs. 14–15% previously), first operating profit since 2021 not enough for markets.
- Shares down 4%. (09:45)
- (09:50) “That wasn’t good enough for investors.”

7. Halloween Candy Inflation

100-piece variety bag now over $16, up from $7 in 2020.
Chocolate prices key contributor (+30% YoY, +78% in five years).
Zaid humorously contemplates switching up his trick-or-treat handouts.
(10:20) “The scariest thing that I saw this Halloween wasn’t a costume or a haunted house. It’s the price of candy.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

(01:20) Zaid Admani on AI spending:
“Investors are starting to wonder how long these big tech companies can keep pouring billions of dollars into AI Capex without showing a meaningful return on investment.”
(03:45) On Apple’s services growth:
“At this point, I’m basically forced to pay Apple $10 a month so they don’t delete all the pictures of my kids off my phone.”
(06:30) Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO:
“Every bit of new capacity that comes online is being monetized as fast as they build it... That’s always a good problem to have.”
(10:20) Halloween candy realization:
“The scariest thing that I saw this Halloween wasn’t a costume or a haunted house. It’s the price of candy.”

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:30 – Market and tech stock sell-off
02:01 – Trump-Xi summit takeaways
03:00 – Apple’s earnings and record outlook
05:00 – Amazon’s AWS resurgence and capex focus
08:10 – Netflix stock split and Warner Bros. Discovery bid rumor
09:05 – Reddit’s blowout quarter
09:45 – Roku’s slowing growth and market reaction
10:20 – Halloween candy inflation fun fact

Tone & Takeaways

Zaid Admani delivers this episode in his signature, conversational style — direct, informed, and often playfully self-deprecating. The episode is packed with actionable insights and context, especially for investors seeking to understand the significance behind the numbers for Apple, Amazon, and other headline names. Zaid’s blend of humor (“I’m basically forced to pay Apple $10...”), skepticism about market psychology, and sharp summary analysis makes this a can’t-miss market overview.

Recommended For:
Investors and finance enthusiasts wanting a fast, upbeat, and well-explained summary of the day’s stock market movers, with a clear focus on what matters to the markets.

Transcript

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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaydad Mani and Today is Friday, October 31st. In today's episode, we'll tell you all the deals announced following the meeting between President Trump and President Xi. We'll also tell you why investors are hyped following earnings from Apple and Amazon. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much a bag of Halloween candy cost today compared to just five years ago. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks took a hit on Thursday with the S&P 500 dropping 1% and the Nasdaq lost 1.6%, dragged down by big tech stocks like Meta, which tanked 11% yesterday following their earnings. We covered Meta's earnings along with Google and Microsoft on yesterday's episode, so go check that out if you missed it. The big takeaway here is that investors are starting to wonder how long these big tech companies can keep pouring billions of dollars into AI Capex without showing a meaningful return on investment. Plus, I think investors are still thinking about the comments that Jerome Powell made on Wednesday about potentially no rate cuts in December. So all of that had the markets in the red yesterday. Now, the other major development yesterday was the face to face meeting between President Trump and China's President Xi in South Korea. The two sides met for the first time face to face in six years, and they struck some deals. Trump says he's rolling back the fentanyl tarif tariff on China by 10%, bringing their overall tariff rate from 57 down to 47%. On top of that, both sides agreed to pause tariffs on shipbuilders for one year. And China also pledged to ease export restrictions on rare earth minerals. So overall there was good development out of that meeting. I think there's still questions around chip export bans to China and the TikTok deal, plus what's going to happen to rare earths long term. But it does seem like tensions between the two sides have ease compared to what it was at the start of the month. So we're going to continue to track the US China development. I don't think the markets are super focused on it anymore. I think they're more focused on big tech earnings. We're about to talk about some earnings right now and more over the next few weeks. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Apple. Apple reported earnings last night and the numbers were pretty solid. In fact, Apple pulled off the earnings trifecta. Revenues were up 8% year over year to over $102 billion, slightly beating estimates. Their earnings per share also beat estimates coming in at 1.85 per share. And the cherry on top was that Apple raised its forecast for this current quarter, with CEO Tim Cook saying the company expects revenue growth of 10 to 12%, making it the best quarter in Apple's history. So solid numbers all around. It seems like the iPhone 17 lineup has been a big hit this year with Apple expecting double digit growth. And looking beyond just hardware, Apple services business continues to be a growth engine. Revenues were up 15% to almost $29 billion. This segment includes everything from App Store fees, Apple TV subscriptions and iCloud storage. At this point, I'm basically forced to pay Apple $10 a month so they don't delete all the pictures of my kids off my phone. And I'm probably going to keep paying because I'm too lazy to manually back up my photos. Now, I should point out that not everything in this earnings report was great. China continues to be a weak spot for Apple. Revenues there fell by 3.6% to $14.5 billion. That missed estimates. It looks like local smartphone makers in China, like Huawei, continued to take market share from Apple. But Tim Cook was optimistic about Apple's China sales, saying that they will bounce back this quarter. And then the other thing was tariffs. Those added about $1.1 billion in cost last quarter. But Apple says that they're absorbing those costs instead of raising prices. I think Tim Cook doesn't want any beef with the president. All in all, I'd say it was a pretty solid quarter for Apple. They had solid numbers in the last quarter and they're expecting solid growth moving forward. Investors like what they heard and Apple stock jumped 4% following the report. Now let's talk Amazon. They also reported earnings last night and they crushed it, especially their cloud business. AWS's revenues jumped 20% to $33 billion, making it the fastest growth since 2022. Now, AWS is a huge part of Amazon's overall business. It only makes up about 15% of their total revenue, but it's responsible for about 60% of their operating income. So it's basically Amazon's profit engine and it's something that investors pay very close attention to. And lately AWS has been feeling the heat from competition from Microsoft and Google. Microsoft's Azure grew by 40% last quarter and Google's Cloud grew by 34%. Both of them faster than AWS. But Amazon reminded investors that they are still the biggest player in cloud when it comes to overall revenue. And, and they're putting up strong growth numbers again. CEO Andy Jassy said that demand for its AI services is outpacing the rate that they can bring new data centers online. That's always a good problem to have. And just like the other big tech companies, Amazon plans to spend a ton of money on AI. They spent $34 billion in capex last quarter, mostly to build out AI data centers. And overall, capex is expected to hit a record $125 billion this year. Just for some context, that's more than what Google plans to spend and nearly double what Microsoft's current pace is. CEO Andy Jassy defended the spending spree, saying that every bit of new capacity that comes online is being monetized as fast as they build it. And I think that's why investors don't seem to mind all the capex spending. In fact, Amazon stock jumped more than 11% following the earnings report. I think investors were just happy to see that AWS is putting up solid growth numbers again. And if you look beyond aws, Amazon's retail business continues to hold up well despite tariffs and a tricky economy. And, and their ads business grew by 24% to over $17 billion. Overall, Amazon's revenues were up 13% and their profits were up 38%. So very good quarter for Amazon. They needed a quarter like this. You know, Amazon stock has been the worst performing out of all the MAG7 this year because they were seen as being behind in AI. But this quarter just reminded Wall street that they are still very much in the game. Let's a take talk about some stocks making moves today. Netflix stock is moving higher this morning after they announced a 10 for 1 stock split. Netflix is just one of 10 companies in the S&P 500 that has a stock price of above $1,000. So after this split, the price will be 110 of what it's trading at today. Investors will get nine extra shares for every one that they own on November 14th. And the new adjusted price kicks in on November 17th. Now remember, stock splits don't change the value of a company or your investment in that company. It just adjusts the price of each individual stock. And they're almost unnecessary at this point because investors can buy stocks fractionally. But it is a psychological boost. When investors see a lower stock price, it tends to drum up retail interest. It also makes it easier to do a covered call strategy. So as a result, Netflix shares are up about 2% this morning. In other Netflix news this they just hired an investment bank to explore a potential bid for Warner Brothers Discovery, which is up for sale right now. Warner's has a lot of great assets. They have hbo, the Harry Potter franchise, the DC superhero universe. So that could be a huge move for Netflix if they're able to pull off this bid. Developing story. Definitely keeping my eye on that now. Sticking with the winners here, let's talk about Reddit. Their stock is jumping this morning after the company posted strong Q3 earnings and and give a strong guidance for Q4. Revenues in Q3 jumped 68% year over year to $585 million, blowing past estimates and their profits hit $163 million, up more than 400% from last year. The company is also seeing strong user growth daily. Active Unique users grew by 19% to 116 million, which is ahead of expectations. So it looks like the AI chat bots aren't pulling away traffic from Reddit just yet, which is making investors happy. Reddit stock is up more than 10% this morning in reaction to the earnings. Now on the flip side, Roku stock is down this morning after the streaming company warned that revenue growth will slow in Q4. The company is expecting 12% growth in Q4, which is below the 14% growth they posted in Q3 and the 15% growth they had in Q2. Roku is still struggling from cautious advertisers and tough competition from the likes of Apple tv, Amazon Fire TV and Google Chromecast. But it wasn't all bad news for Roku. They actually posted their first operating profit since 2021, earning $9.5 million in Q3. But that wasn't good enough for investors. Shares of Roku are down more than 4% this morning in reaction to the earnings. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The scariest thing that I saw this Halloween wasn't a costume or a haunted house. It's the price of candy. According to research by finance bug, a 100 piece variety bag of candy that now costs more than $16, up from just the $7 it was back in 2020. So the prices have more than doubled in just five years. This price increase is largely because chocolate has gotten so expensive. Chocolate prices have gone up nearly 30% since last Halloween and then it's up almost 78% in the past five years. So yeah, man, I went to go buy some candy. It was expensive. I still ended up buying the variety chocolate bag, but I thought about just handing out, like, applesauces and pretzels this year. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. It was an action packed week, but we made it to the end and we got some more bonus episodes coming out this weekend. We're posting a Deep Dive episode tomorrow. Then Kyla Scanlon will be joining the podcast for a Sunday episode. So make sure you guys keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. 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 you guys back here tomorrow for the Deep Dive.