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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 Wednesday, February 11th. In today's episode, we'll recap the latest jobs report and why the market is panicking about AI. We'll also recap earnings from Ford and Lyft, then stick around to the end of the show to find out what Americans are saying about the economy. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Markets took a bit of a breather on Tuesday. The S P 500 slipped 0.3% while the Nasdaq fell 0.6%. And this time, the market was dragged down by the financial sector. You guys remember how last week investors got freaked out about AI disrupting software companies, which caused the SAS apocalypse. With software stocks selling off. Well, now those fears have come to the finance industry. On Tuesday, a fintech company called Altruist announced a new AI tool that can create personal personalize tax strategies and interpret financial statements. Basically, it can do what an entire team of financial advisors currently do, but for much cheaper. And that caused stocks like Charles Schwab and Raymond Jones to have their worst day in years, dropping more than 7%. You know, the market seems to have this self first, ask questions later mentality right now when it comes to AI Anytime there's a new AI tool announced, investors are freaking out. Now. I think it's a bit of an overreaction, but things are changing so fast with AI and that's leading to uncertainty. And that's why we're having having all this volatility. Personally, though, I don't mind the volatility. You know, it keeps things interesting and it creates opportunities to buy the dip. Now, zooming out, though, let's talk macroeconomics because we got the January jobs report this morning, and it came in way stronger than expected. The US economy added 130,000 jobs in January, which crushed the 55,000 that Wall street was expecting. And unemployment actually fell to 4.3% from 4.4%, which was also a surprise. Now, this report did include some revisions to prior years. Turns out 2024 only added 1.2 million jobs and not the 2 million initially reported. And 2025 was even worse. Only 181,000 jobs were added, versus the 584,000 previously estimated. So the labor market was way weaker last year than we thought. But things seem to be stabilizing heading into 2026. And I wonder what the Fed's gonna do now. They're probably gonna wait to cut interest rates because of the strong labor market data. We're also getting a CPI inflation report on Friday that's going to play a role in the Fed's decision as well. So, yeah, there is a lot going on right now with the anxiety and volatility around AI. We're still going through earnings season and we're getting macroeconomic data as well. So we're going to be staying on top of all of it. 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 Ford. Ford reported earnings last night, and the numbers were not great. The company posted its worst quarterly earnings miss in Ford four years. In the fourth quarter, Ford earned just 13 cents per share, which was well below the 19 cents that analysts expected. The reason for the miss was a surprise $900 million tariff hit that showed up at the very end of the year. See, the Trump administration announced a tariff relief program in October that would give automakers like Ford credits to offset tariffs on imported auto parts. Now, Ford assumed this would retroactively apply to tariffs going all the way back to May. But then on December 23, the Trump administration told for Ford, the credits would only apply starting in November. Ford was not expecting that. And that added another $900 million to Ford's tariff bill last year. And overall, the company paid $2 billion in tariffs in 2025. But beyond just tariffs, Ford also took a 19.5 billion dollar restructuring charge related to pulling back on its EV business. So Overall, Ford reported $8.2 billion in net losses for 2025. That's their worst since the Great Recession in 2008. And as for the CFO said the company will continue to lose money on EVs until 2029. But you know, despite reporting those terrible Q4 numbers, Ford stock is actually up this morning because they gave a pretty optimistic guidance for 2026. They're expecting adjusted earnings to come in between 8 billion and $10 billion. And a big reason for that is that Ford expects to see high demand for trucks and SUVs, which have higher margins. You know, thanks to recent regulatory changes that have eased fuel economy penalties, Ford can now crank out as many pickup trucks and SUVs they want without getting fined. And that's why Ford stock is up like 2% this morning. Investors are ignoring all the tariff hits and the EV losses, and they're focused on the upside of more trucks and SUVs. Let's shift gears, no pun intended. And Talk about Netflix and Warner Brothers. Now, we haven't talked about the Netflix Warner Brothers acquisition in a while and things are getting messier. We got activist investors involved. Now. According to the Wall Street Journal, the activist investor and Quora holdings has built a 2,100 million dollars stake in Warner's and is pushing the company to walk away from the 72 billion dollar deal with Netflix and merge with Paramount instead. Now, when I first read this headline, I was a little confused because $200 million is less than 1% of what Warner Brothers is worth. So. And Quora doesn't really have much influence yet, but the firm says they're going to keep buying more shares and they've threatened a full blown proxy fight if the Warner board doesn't listen to them. And Quora thinks that the Paramount deal is better because it's more money, it's for the entire company and not just the stream. It'll have less antitrust hurdles to close the deal compared to Netflix. You know, Netflix is already facing some regulatory pushback. In fact, Netflix executives were in Washington D.C. last week testifying in front of the Senate regarding this deal. So that's why Ancora wants Warner's to go with the Paramount deal. Now I also think that Paramount is going to face some regulatory resistance as well. What I found interesting was that Ancora thinks that Warner CEO David Zaslav is pushing the Netflix deal so hard because he's trying to land an executive role at Netflix after the transaction closes. You know, there's been reporting that David Zaslav will receive up to $500 million in compensation if the Netflix deal closes. So yeah, we'll see what happens. Another episode in the Warner's Netflix Paramount saga. You know, Warner's shareholder vote is expected to go down sometime next month. But yeah, I don't see this deal closing any time this year, which means I'm going to keep having to pay for hbo. I just want HBO to be bundled with Netflix so I can save 12 bucks a month. Let's talk about some stocks make in moves today. Shares of an electric aircraft maker, Beta Technologies, are soaring this morning after an SEC filing revealed that Amazon owns about 5% of the company. Now, what's funny is that this isn't even new news. Amazon originally invested in beta back in 2021, but maybe the SEC filing reminded investors that Amazon is still a major shareholder. Now, on top of that, the company also got a stock upgrade from Jefferies, which upgraded the stock to a buy rating with a 50 price target. Now, Beta makes These electric airplanes that can take off and land vertically. This was a hot space a few years ago. Other companies include Joby and Archer. But things have cooled off a bit. You know, Beta recently went public back in November of 2025 at $34 a share. And by yesterday's close, the Stock was down 41% from its IPO price. But it's up more than 20% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, Lyft is getting absolutely crushed this morning after reporting terrible fourth quarter results. The revenues for the ride sharing company only grew 3% in Q4 year over year, which is pretty bad when compared to Uber's 20% growth in the same quarter. The ride metrics were also weak. Lyft had 29.2 million active riders, and total riders came in at 243.5 million. Both of those missing Wall street estimates. And then to make matters worse, guidance for Q1 was also disappointing. Now, despite the slower growth, lyft announced a $1 billion share buyback program, hoping that was going to help their stock price. It didn't. They also tried to spin 2026 as the year of the AV with their anonymous vehicle partnerships. Investors just aren't buying it, though. Lyft stock is down more than 15% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Americans are feeling pretty mixed about the economy. According to a new Gallup poll released this week, 50% of Americans think the stock market will go up over the next six months, while only 25% think that it will go down. On top of that, about 49% expect economic growth to improve, compared to 36% who think that it'll get worse. So that sounds pretty bullish, right? Well, the poll also shows that 62% of Americans think that inflation is going to rise, and 50% expect unemployment to also increase. So, yeah, the poll is sending mixed signals. People want to feel bullish, but they're also worried about inflation and the labor market. Now, if you dig in a bit deeper into the numbers, the optimism is heavily split along party lines. Republicans are overwhelmingly bullish, and Democrats are much more pessimistic. And, you know, that's one reason why I don't put too much weight into these polls anymore. They're very divided and partisan at this point. 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, wherever 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 information engagement really does help us out and 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.