← The Rundown
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Republic.com presents the Rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadmani and today is Monday, October 27th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why this might be the most important week of the year for the stock market. We'll also tell you about Lululemon's latest deal to turn around the company and why GameStop is making headlines again. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out which country has more data centers than all others combined. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. The stock market is coming off another bullish week with The S&P 500 and NASDAQ both hitting record highs again on Friday. You know, October has been a pretty volatile month, but the bull market seems to be fully back on track and stocks continued to rally this morning after US And Chinese trade officials teased that a trade deal was closed between the two countries. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant said the two sides have a very successful framework in place and they hope that President Trump and President Xi will finalize the deal in their meeting on Thursday. The meeting between the two leaders has been highly anticipated for weeks now, and it could finally lead to a trade truce between the two countries. Now, in a normal week, a meeting between these two leaders would be the dominant headline, but not this week. In addition to the Trump QI meeting, there's also a Fed meeting on Wednesday where the Federal Reserve is very likely to cut interest rates again. And then on top, top of that, we're getting a ton of big time earnings this week, including from Microsoft, Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon. These are five of the six largest companies in the world and these big tech companies have carried the markets all year. So investors are going to be paying close attention to what these companies have to report and most importantly, what they say about their commitment to spending on AI. Pretty much every big tech company except for Apple has committed to spending hundreds of billions of dollars on on AI Capex. So we'll see what they have to say about that moving forward. So overall, we are in for an action pack week, especially Wednesday and Thursday. It's definitely one of those weeks where you don't want to miss an episode. So hit the notification bell wherever you listen to your podcast so you're notified as soon as an episode drops every morning. You know, I've already loaded up on coffee and energy drinks. We're going to be staying on top of all this stuff. I think the hardest part for us will be keeping these episodes under 10 minutes every day there's just so much to cover this week. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Lululemon. Lululemon will start selling NFL branded apparel for the first time after inking a deal with fanatics and the NFL. The new merch drops this Tuesday and it's going to feature Lululemon hoodies and other Lululemon gear with NFL team logos on it. The gear will be sold through the NFL and Fanatics jobs along with individual team stores. You know, Lululemon has been trying to rebrand beyond just being like a yoga brand, and partnering with sports leagues seems to be a key to that strategy. Doing that, they're hoping to attract more sales from men. Lululemon has already signed a deal with the NHL on hockey fan apparel, and their athlete roster now includes names like F1 legend Lewis Hamilton, NFL wide receiver DK Metcalf, and tennis star Francis Tiafo. Well, I don't know if I'd call Tiafo a star, but he's a very good tennis player, you know. Zooming out. Lululemon has been struggling lately. Their stock is down more than 50 this year. Shares tanked last month after the company slapped slashed its earnings outlook and said tariffs would cost the company $240 million. On top of that, a couple weeks ago, the founder of the company, Chip Wilson, took out an ad in the Wall Street Journal criticizing the current management of prioritizing Wall street over customers. So we'll see if these sports partnerships leads to more sales, especially for men. Sports fans do like to buy merch with our team logo on it, so I'm kind of interested myself. Investors are pretty excited about the strategy. Shares of Lululemon are upset 6% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's shift gears and talk about TikTok. The TikTok ban slash sale has been in limbo all year, but the saga might finally be coming to an end. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen said over the weekend that the US And China have reached a final deal for the future of TikTok, and that President Trump and President Xi are expected to officially consummate the deal with when they meet on Thursday in South Korea. Probably not the phrasing that I would have gone with, but I get what he's trying to say. You know, the Trump administration had previously announced that a deal had been worked out regarding a TikTok sale. Under the agreement, American investors would take majority ownership of TikTok's US operation, while the Chinese parent company ByteDance would keep a less than 20% stake. The US version of TikTok would also run on a licensed copy of the algorithm separate from Chinese control and and it would have a new US based board of directors overseeing moderation and operations. Investors in the new TikTok include Oracle, which will handle the cloud and security infrastructure. So yeah, it looks like TikTok will live on in the US unless a last minute disagreement comes up between Chi and Trump. We'll have to see what the TikTok experience is like after the sale is complete. If Larry Ellison somehow ends up with 10 million TikTok followers following the sale, then I'm going to have my guard up regarding the new algorithm. Let's talk about some stuff Stocks Making Moves Today Shares of Avidity Biosciences are soaring after Novartis announced it's buying the company in a $12 billion all cash deal. Novartis will pay $72 a share, which is a 46% premium from where Avidity closed on Friday. This move gives Novartis a big foothold in the RNA based Therapeutics, which is a cutting edge class of drugs that tweaks how your genes are expressed to help prevent or treat diseases. This deal is expected to close in the first half of next year and Novartis says it'll boost its annual sales growth rate to 6% through 2029. Shares of Avidity jumped more than 44% this morning on this news. Now, sticking with the winners here, GameStop is back in the headlines, and this time it's because of the White House. This one's pretty silly, but try to follow along here. GameStop posted on Twitter that the console wars were over and and that PlayStation had won. This was in response to the news that Halo, which is an Xbox exclusive, would be coming to PlayStation in 2026. And this is where things get silly. The White House retweeted the GameStop post with an AI image of President Trump dressed as Master Chief with the caption Power to the players Again. I'm not really sure why the White House did that, but this caused GameStop stock to jump more than 5% this morning. Is this retweet by the White House going to help GameStop sell more games? Probably not, but this is 2025 and when does financial metrics matter when it comes to stock valuations anymore? Now, on the flip side, shares of U.S. rare earth companies are getting crushed this morning after Treasury Secretary Scott Besson said the U.S. and China are close to a deal that would delay China's rare earth export restrictions. You know, we've talked about this a lot. China controls 70% of the global rare earth production and 90% of the processing. So these export restrictions by China was expected to be a big boost for US Based miners. But now, with a potential deal in place with China, the US Miners might not see the boost they once expected. As a result, shares of MP Materials are down 5%, Critical Metals is down 17%, and Trilogy Metals is down 15%. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. There are more data centers in the US Than all other countries combined. According to research From Apollo, the US has more than 5,400 data centers, while the next closest country, which is Germany, has just 529. It's kind of a shocking stat. I mean, the US is way ahead of other countries when it comes to data center build out. And that lead by the US Is likely going to become bigger since big tech companies have committed to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build more data centers specifically to meet the demands of AI. Pretty soon we might have more data centers in the U.S. then we have McDonald's. Well, 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 podcasts. 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 shelf. And if you guys missed it, go check out our weekend episodes. On Saturday, we posted a deep dive looking at all the investments the Trump administration has made into companies. And on Sunday, we had a fantastic interview with the chief economist at Ramp, Ara Kharazian. I learned a lot from that conversation with Ara. I walked away being kind of bullish about AI. So I highly recommend checking that out if you missed it. 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.