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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 Thursday, October 30th. In today's episode, we'll recap all the drama from the Fed meeting and why we might not get a rate cut in December. We'll also recap earnings from Google, Microsoft and Meta, then stick around to the end of the show to find out how fast Nvidia went from a fourth four trillion dollar company to hitting five trillion dollars. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks are coming off a wild day of trading yesterday thanks to the Fed meeting. The S&P 500 ultimately ended the day flat and the Nasdaq managed to gain 0.6% thanks again to tech stocks. Now there was a moment yesterday where the markets tanked to thanks to our boy Jerome Powell. It all started with the Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points, putting the fed funds rate to between 3.75 and 4%. Now, that move by the Fed was expected. No surprise there. The surprise came after the decision during Jerome Powell's press conference. See, going into the day, the markets were pricing in a 90% chance of another rate cut in December. But Jerome Powell threw cold water all over that idea saying the December rate cut is far, far from a foregone conclusion. And look, as soon as those words came out of his mouth, the markets tanked for a few minutes. Investors did quickly buy the dip and stocks recovered by the end of the trading day. Kind of wild that not even Jerome Powell can stop this AI powered bull run. I think investors are still expecting the Fed to cut interest rates at the next meeting because remember, the Fed's job is to keep inflation low and employment high. To be fair, the Fed is in a tricky spot right now. Inflation is still at 3% and climbing because of tariffs. Plus the Fed doesn't have all the recent economic data the government regarding inflation in the labor market. Because of the government shutdown, the Fed is partially flying blind right now. So I can see why Jerome Powell was pumping the brakes on a December rate cut. But in the press conference yesterday, Jerome Powell himself said that if you remove the one time impact of tariffs, inflation would be at around 2.3% which is pretty close to the Fed's 2% target. Plus, with all the recent headlines of companies laying off thousands of workers, I doubt the Fed wants to be behind the curve and risk a weaker job market. So I think the Fed will still cut rates in December. In fact, as of this morning, the markets are still pricing in a 70% chance of a 25 basis point cut at the December meeting. So we'll have to see what happens. I mean, maybe a rate cut doesn't even matter anymore with the entire market just focused on AI. But let me know in the comments on what you guys think the Fed will do at the December meeting. Let's run through some headlines and we're talking big tech earnings, starting with Google. Google just put up record numbers in Q3 record, with the company having its first $100 billion quarterly revenue. Sales were up 16% year over year to $102 billion and profits were up 33% to nearly 35 billion. The big growth engine for Google was their Google Cloud division, which brought in $15.2 billion in revenue, which is up 34% from last year. And a big reason for that growth was AI. Over 70% of Google Cloud customers are now using AI tools and CEO Sundar Pichai said the company has sign dollar cloud deals this year than in the previous two years combined. So Google Cloud continues to be a huge growth engine, but with all this AI demand, Google is having to spend more money to build out their AI infrastructure. The company now projects CapEx spending to be around $92 billion for 2025, which is almost double what it was last year. The company expects another increase in capex spending for 2026. Most of this money is going towards building AI data centers and training their AI models. Now outside of cloud, Google continues to crush it in other areas. Their AI chatbot Gemini continues to gain traction, now boasting 650 million monthly active users, up from the 450 million last quarter. On top of that, Google search revenue grew by 15% year over year to $56.6 billion. And Google Ad sales also topped $10 billion. So all in all, Google is firing on all cylinders. And all that chatter from earlier this year of chat, GPT and AI destroying Google's business, that's all gone away. In fact, I think it's safe to say that Google seems to be the clear winner and maybe even the leader of the AI boom. Investors sure seem to see it that way. Now Google stock is up more than 5% this morning and the stock just hit another record high. Now let's shift to Microsoft. They also reported earnings last night and they had a strong quarter, but their stock actually took a hit because investors are getting a bit nervous on all the AI spend by the company. Revenues for Microsoft came in at $77.7 billion, up 18% year over year, easily topping expect. And the big driver once again was Microsoft Azure, which is their cloud business that saw revenues jump 39%, outpacing rivals like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. But the headline that grabbed Wall Street's attention wasn't the revenue, it was all the spending coming from Microsoft. Microsoft's CapEx hit a record $34.9 billion in Q3, and CFO Amy Hood said that number will keep climbing through next year. That's a sharp reversal from what Microsoft said earlier this year, where they expected spending to cool off. And I think it's those caused Microsoft stock to drop around 3% this morning. It's just funny how markets work though. Google pretty much said the same thing as Microsoft, but their stock went up while Microsoft's stock is going down. Now that might be because Google has a leading edge AI model, so all their spending might be justified while Microsoft is using OpenAI's model as part of their partnership with the company. Overall, though, I'd say that Microsoft is still crushing it. But investors are just being a bit more cautious when it comes to the AI spend. And that brings us to Meta. Meta also logged a record third quarter with revenues topping 51.5%.2 billion dollars. It's the first time the company has crossed the 50 billion dollar mark in a single quarter. But despite the earnings beat, Meta stock is down more than 10% this morning after the company said it plans to spend more than $70 billion this year on AI infrastructure. That is more than double what they spent last year and it makes up about 37 of total projected revenue. So that clearly freaked out investors. Now CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to calm nerves, saying that Meta is saying seeing the returns from their AI investment, which includes new recommendation systems for their ads, the Llama AI model, and their Meta Rayman smart glasses. But Wall Street's not buying it. Meta said that its capex will keep rising into 2026, and analysts are now questioning how all this spending will translate into new revenue streams beyond just ads. You know, Meta's ads business continues to be strong. It's up 26% year over year, but its Reality Labs division posted another $4 billion loss. And despite all the hype around Meta's smart glasses, which are pretty cool, they're not going to sell nearly enough of those to justify all the AI spend. So I wonder if Zuck will just inject more ads into our Instagram feed in the short term to make Wall street happy while he spends billions of dollars to reach super intelligence. I think the overall takeaway is that investors are now finally asking companies to justify the massive AI spend. And if there's no clear pathway for more revenue, then investors are getting nervous and selling off the stock. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Eli Lilly is seeing a nice jump today after the pharma giant crushed earnings expectations thanks to massive demand for its weight loss and diabetes drugs. Revenues from their diabetes drug Manjaro more than doubled to $6.5 billion, and sales of Zepbound, which is their weight loss drug, surged more than 184% year over year to $3.6 billion. Overall revenues for the company jumped 54 from last year to $17.6 billion, and profits came in way above expectations as well. Eli Lilly expects demand to stay strong. The company actually raised their full year guidance for both sales and profits, and as a result, the stock is up more than 4% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, let's talk Chipotle. Their stock is getting absolutely smoked this morning after the company cut its sales outlook for the year. Chipotle now expects same store sales to shrink slightly in 2025, which is a big downgrade from their earlier guidance which called for growth. Chipotle said that traffic to their restaurants fell for the third straight quarter and the company is blaming the economy for the downgrade, saying that customers are eating out less, especially younger customers and those earning $100,000 or less a year, which makes up about 40% of Chipotle's customer base. It probably doesn't help that Chipotle's quality has also gone way downhill while getting more expensive at the same time. So yeah, Chipotle is feeling the squeeze and their stock is down nearly 20% today in reaction to the earnings. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. It took Nvidia just 78 trading days to go from a $4 trillion valuation to hitting $5 trillion for the first time. That's the fastest $1 trillion market cap jump in history. For some context, it took Nvidia over a year to go from a $3 trillion valuation to a $4 trillion valuation. So it's a great example of the AI trade just continuing to heat up. 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, 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 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.
