← The Rundown
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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 Friday, November 21st. In today's episode, I'll explain why the markets are having a meltdown and why it's not about AI. I'll also recap the latest deal between OpenAI and Foxconn and why Amazon is laying off a ton of engineers. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much a Superman comic just sold for in auction. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, guys, the markets really played with our emotions yesterday. You know, investors woke up on Thursday feeling great with stocks in the green thanks to a big earnings beat from Nvidia. But by lunchtime, markets were back in the red. By the closing bell, The S&P 500 had lost 1.6% and and the Nasdaq had dropped 2.2%, wiping out the morning rally. If you look at the market from peak to bottom, it was a 4% intraday swing, which is one of the biggest reversals we've had all year. Now, if you listen to yesterday's show, you know how hyped I was because I thought that Jensen had saved the day again and the big quarter from Nvidia would calm all the concerns around an AI bubble and stop the market slide and potentially reignite the AI trade. Turns out I was way off. Nvidia ended up being one of the biggest losers yesterday, going from up 5% to down 3%. So there's still some concerns around the AI bubble. But this sell off is more than just that. It's also about rate cuts. The market seems to be upset that the Federal Reserve might not cut interest rates in December. See, a month ago, the odds of a December rate cut was at 99%. It was pretty much guaranteed. But now the odds are around 40% according to the CME Fed watch tool. The Fed's kind of in a tough spot right now because inflation is still in the 3% range while the labor market is still holding steady. So the Fed doesn't have to be in a rush to cut interest rates right now. And because of that, the market is behaving like my two year old son when he doesn't get his favorite snack. They're having a meltdown because they might not get what they want, which is lower rates. And I think that's the main driver of the sell off in the stock market right now. Also, check on your crypto friends this weekend and over Thanksgiving because They are really going through it right now. Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to slide, losing more than 10% yesterday. Bitcoin is now at $83,000, the lowest price since April and it's down more than 30% from its peak back in October. And ETH is even worse. It's at $2,700 right now, down more than 40% from its peak. So yeah, crypto is in a full on bear market right now. It's getting pretty tough out there. The next few weeks are going to be very interesting, especially the December 10th Fed meeting. By the way, as I was recording this, I got a notification that a Fed president, John Williams, just suggested that a rate cut is still still on the table for the December meeting. And as soon as he said that, the odds of a rate cut jumped from 40 to 70. So yeah, we have three weeks until the December Fed meeting and the markets might get pretty volatile. 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 open AI. OpenAI just announced a hardware deal with Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer best known for building the iPhone. Foxconn will help OpenAI co design and manufacture components for OpenAI's US data centers. This includes things like server racks, power systems, cooling systems and networking components. Now, there's no price tag to this deal, but I mean, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has committed to spending $1.4 trillion on AI infrastructure over the next few years. So this deal is kind of part of that build out plan. And for Foxconn, this is a pretty big deal because they've been trying to diversify their business away from being just a consumer electronics builder. Historically, assembling Apple products accounted for 50% of Foxconn's revenue, but now that's down to around 35% as they get more involved in the AI data center space. So this is just another example of every tech company pivoting a little bit to get a piece of that data center pie. Let's shift gears and talk about Amazon. Remember, Amazon announced their biggest layoff in company history last month, and according to a new filing, engineers were the hardest hit. Of those layoffs, Amazon cut about 14,000 employees in October, which is reportedly just phase one of a plan to eliminate around 30,000 jobs. And according to filings in New York, California, New Jersey and Washington, it showed that 40% of the 4,700 cuts in those states were engineering roles. Now, Amazon says they're making these cuts because of over hiring during the pandemic, but they're also looking to AI for efficiency gains, especially in software development. Now I'm not a software developer, but I hear these vibe coding tools have gotten very popular. But beyond just making cuts to the engineering team, Amazon is also cutting back on experimental products including telehealth services, fitness wearables and physical retail concepts, just to name a few. It seems like Amazon really wants to be leaner and move faster and double down on AI. I also think they're feeling the pressure from investors since Amazon stock has been the worst performing out of all the Mag 7 this year. So we'll see if all these cuts pay off. Remember, Meta went through something similar back in 2022 when they had the year of efficiency and their stock rallied after that. So we'll see if the same thing happens with Amazon. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Gap is getting a nice pop this morning after the clothing retailer delivered a surprisingly strong quarter. Comparable sales jumped 5%, beating expectations and marking Gap's strongest sales growth since the 2017 holiday season. Excluding the pandemic weirdness, of course. This is now Gap seventh straight quarter of positive comparable sales, so the company has some momentum right now. Gap said they saw a boost thanks to their viral Better in Denim campaign from the pop group Cat Eye. I'm not gonna lie, I've never heard of Cat Eye before, but they're really popular now. If you look at each brand under Gap, almost all of them are crushing it. Old Navy is their biggest brand, making up 60% of the revenue. It saw a comparable sales jump of 6%. The main Gap brand saw a 7% sales jump, and even Banana Republic, which is my personal favorite, saw a 4% sales jump. The only brand that is struggling right now under Gap is Athleta, which saw sales drop 11% overall, though I got to say Gap is crushing it and their stock is up 8% this morning following the earnings. Now on the flip side, let's talk Bitcoin, because this bitcoin meltdown is bringing down bitcoin related companies, the biggest one being Michael Saylor's Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy. Bitcoin is having its worst month since the 2022 crypto collapse, and Strategy stock is getting hammered as a result. Because Strateg Strategy is a bitcoin treasury company owning about 3% of all the bitcoin in the world, Shares of Strategy have been sliding all week and it's now down 60% from its peak back in mid July. And to make matters worse, JP Morgan warned yesterday that strategy could be booted from the MSCI indices, which would force $2.8 billion of selling of strategy shares. So there might be more pain ahead for this company. Other bitcoin related stocks taking the hit are riot platforms Galaxy Digital and American Bitcoin. You know, that's, that's kind of how it goes with these bitcoin treasury companies. When bitcoin goes up, their stock goes up, and when bitcoin goes down, their stock goes down. And usually it goes down at a faster rate than the actual underlying bitcoin. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. A copy of the very first Superman comic from 1939 just sold for $9.1 million at auction, making it the most expensive comic book ever sold at auction. Now here's the crazy part. This comic book was found by three brothers in California while they were cleaning out their late mother's house. They found the comic book in a box in the attic and it was in surprisingly good condition, which is why it fetched such a huge price tag at auction. That kind of begs the question, I wonder if there's something that I have today that my kids will end up selling for millions of dollars in the future. Do you guys think that the box for the iPhone 3G will have any value in 2080? Or should I finally throw that away because I can't throw away any of my iPhone boxes. Well, all right guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Gotta say, pretty brutal week in the markets and it's gonna be interesting to see what happens moving forward. Just as a heads up, next week is a short week. The markets are going to be closed on Thursday for Thanksgiving so no show for us. But we are going to be posting the other four days so make sure you guys keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. And as always, if you guys enjoyed the show, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple, YouTube, 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. Also, don't forget deep dive episode dropping tomorrow and an awesome interview on Sunday. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scene scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow for the deep dive.
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