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Public.com presents the Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadmani and today is Wednesday, January 28th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why the US dollar is losing its value. We'll also recap earnings from ASML and Starbucks and tell you why Amazon plans to cut 16,000 jobs. Then stick around to the end of the show to learn about a secret investment by Zoom that is paying off big time. We got a show for you today. Let's go. Stocks kept the rally going on Tuesday with the S P500 jumping 0.4% and closing at record highs. The Nasdaq did even better, jumping 0.9% thanks to a rally in tech stocks. I think it's a sign that investors are optimistic that big tech companies will deliver on earnings this week. Now let's talk about the US Dollar because it is getting a lot of attention right now. The dollar has fallen about 2.66% over the last four trading days, which marks its largest four day drop since last April when President Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs. Now, President Trump was asked yesterday about the dollar's recent slide and he didn't sound so concerned. And to be fair, there are pros and cons to a weaker dollar. On the positive side, a weaker dollar makes US Exports and services cheaper for foreign buyers. So that's good news for big multinational companies that sell a lot of stuff overseas. Their stuff effectively goes on sale for international buyers. On the flip side, though, imports become more expensive for Americans and traveling abroad also gets pricier. So I guess right now don't rush to book that European vacation just yet. I think the bigger story, though, is why the dollar is dropping in the first place. There seems to be a lack of investor confidence in the stability of the US Right now, so we'll see what happens. But that sets up a very interesting day today. Remember, the Fed meeting wraps up today at 2pm Eastern, and while the markets aren't expecting a rate cut, all eyes will be on Jero Powell's press conference. So I'm definitely going to be tuning into that to see what Jerome Powell has to say. And I'll recap everything on tomorrow's show and maybe even do an instant reaction on Instagram. So go follow us there. We'll put a link in the description. If that wasn't enough drama for today, we also have Tesla, Microsoft, and Meta all reporting earnings after the bell. So yeah, tomorrow's episode is going to be jam packed. I don't know how we're going to fit everything into 10 minutes. But yeah, if you're new here, it's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast and tuning in every day. To stay in the loop, let's run through some headlines, starting with asml. Shares of the Dutch company ASML are hitting record highs this morning after they reported a blowout quarter. See, ASML is a very important company when it comes to AI. They make these ultraviolet lithography machines which are essential for manufacturing advanced chips like for Nvidia, Apple and others. In fact, they're the only company in the world that makes these EUV machines and they are seeing a surge in order right now thanks to AI. ASML reported 13.2 billion euros in bookings for the fourth quarter, which was nearly double the 6.8 billion euros that analysts were expecting. That Q4 was the largest quarter of orders in the company's history and more than half of their orders were for their most advanced machines. ASML CEO said their customers now believe that AI demand is sustainable, so they're aggressively building out capacity. They're going to need more of ASML lithography machines to do that. So because of that, ASML is raising their 2026 guidance. They are now expecting revenues to be between 34 and 39 billion euros and and they also announced 12 billion euros in share buybacks, which Wall street obviously loved. ASML stock is up around 5% this morning and it's already up 25% for 2026. Now one thing to note, despite the strong earnings, the company did announce that they plan to cut 1700 jobs, which is roughly 4% of their workforce, mostly in the Netherlands, but some here in the US as well. Management said the cuts are about streamlining the company and improving agility as they scale scale up production. One other thing to watch when it comes to ASML is China. China is still their biggest market, accounting for roughly 36% of their sales last quarter, but that's expected to drop to around 20% going forward because of export restrictions. ASML can't sell their most advanced machines to China due to US led trade controls, so Chinese chip makers have been stockpiling older equipment while they still can't, so that could impact ASML's revenues moving forward. Now speaking of China and AI, there are new reports saying that the Chinese government is allowing some of biggest tech companies like ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent to buy Nvidia's H200AI chips. According to Reuters, these companies have been cleared to buy more than 400,000 of Nvidia's H200 chips. And that's a big deal because the H200 is one of Nvidia's most powerful AI chip and it was previously blocked by the US government from being exported to China. But the US government approved the export of these chips weeks ago. But then the Chinese government decided to block the import of these chips in order to prop up their own domestic chip makers. Well, now these Nvidia chips are allowed to be legal, legally imported into China and Nvidia stock is up around 2% this morning as a result. By the way, probably not a coincidence, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in China this week. So I'm sure he has something to do with this. Let's shift gears and talk about Amazon. They also just announced layoffs this morning. The company plans to cut about 16,000 corporate employees, marking the second big round of job cuts in just a few months. Amazon has now eliminated roughly 30,000 corporate roles in three months, which is about 10% of its white collar workforce. Now Amazon says this is part of an ongoing push to strip out bureaucracy and flatten the organization. These cuts are heavily focused on middle management as CEO Andy Jassy tries to undo some of the aggressive pandemic era hiring and getting the company to move faster. And you can ignore the AI factor here as well. Andy Jassy said a few months ago that artificial intelligence tools would lead to more job losses due to the automation of roles ranging from routine administrative tasks to coders. Now you know Amazon is the second largest employer amongst private companies. They have more than 1.5 million people on their payroll. Payroll. But more than 1 million of those are hourly workers in warehouses and logistics. Those jobs aren't being impacted by these cuts. But long term though, even those jobs aren't safe. Amazon has previously said it plans to replace hundreds of thousands of warehouse jobs with robots with a long term goal of automating as much as 75% of its operations. And by the way, while all of this cost cutting is happening, Amazon is spending more and more on AI. The company recently raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to $125 billion, which highest AI and infrastructure spending plan amongst all the mega cap tech companies. What's interesting though is that Amazon stock has been the worst performing out of all the Max 7s in the past 12 months. We'll learn more about Amazon's finances and Capex plans next week when they report earnings. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Starbucks are Popping this morning after the coffee giant delivered better than expected earnings and showed real signs that its turnaround is finally working. Revenue was up 6% in Q4 to nearly $10 billion, beating estimates same store sales jumped 4% globally and 4% in the US which was the strongest growth since late 2023. Starbucks says they're seeing more customers come through the door as well. Store Traffic grew in Q4 for the first time in two years. Now, it wasn't a perfect quarter. Profits took a hit and missed estimates as Starbucks spent heavily on labor, store upgrades and dealt with higher coffee costs and tariffs. But investors are clearly focused on the bigger picture, and CEO Brian Nichols backed the starb strategy, which appears to be gaining traction and bringing back customers. Starbucks stock is up around 7% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, shares of Corning are dropping. And this one might seem a bit confusing at first. The Corning is mostly known for making the Gorilla glass for iPhones and other Apple products. But their biggest business is now making fiber optic cables. Just yesterday, Corning announced a massive $6 billion deal with Meta to supply fiber optic cables for Meta's AI data centers through 2030. That news sent their stock up 16% yesterday, but the stock is giving back some of those gains today after the company provided Q1 guidance. Corning says they expect first quarter sales to be between 4.2 and $4.3 billion, which is technically above the Wall street estimates, but not enough to keep yesterday's momentum going. And that's why the stock is down around 4% this morning. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The video chat company Zoom quietly invested $51 million in the AI startup Anth, which is the maker of Claude, back in 2023 through their venture capital arm. Fast forward to today, and analysts estimate that stake is now worth between 2 to 4 billion dollars, depending on dilution. And remember, Anthropic is rumored to be eyeing an IPO soon, which could push that valuation even higher. So, yeah, shout out to Whoever was running Zoom's investment team in 2023. And honestly, that might be the best move that Zoom has done since the pandemic. Because let's be honest, their product has not improved over the last few years. Like, I want to rage quit every time the app tries to update. Why does that keep happening? At this point, I barely use Zoom anymore. Google Meet is the way to go for me. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode if you did and you have like 5 extra seconds, consider giving us a 5 star rating on Apple Spotify YouTube where you listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. 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 you guys back here tomorrow.