← The Rundown
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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadat Mani and Today is Monday, March 23rd. In today's episode, we'll tell you what Trump just said that has the markets really excited. We'll also tell you why the Pentagon is going all in on Palantir's AI Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why movie theaters might be back. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, stocks are coming off their fourth straight week of losses with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both falling more than 2% last week. The last time the markets had a losing streak like this was back in April of last year when we were all talking about tariffs. Now the conversation is all about the war with Iran and oil prices. We are now in week four of the war. The Strait of Hormuz is still mostly closed and energy infrastructure is still being attacked across the Gulf region, causing a supply shock and sending prices to the highest level in years. International Brent crude closed last week at $112 a barrel and the US WTI was sitting around $98 a barrel. One of the side effects of oil prices surging is the impact that it's having on rate cuts. When oil prices go up, everything gets more expensive across the economy, which means that inflation could spike back up again. And with inflation potentially coming back, we might not get a rate cut this year from the Fed. In fact, the market is now concerned that we might get a rate hike from the Fed later this year. And that fear of a rate hike has sent the 10 year treasury yield to hit 4.5%, the highest level since July. And when you had the 10 year rising, that causes mortgage rates to spike. In fact, the average 30 year mortgage has gone from 5.9% to 6.2% in the last three weeks. Now, looking ahead, it looked like we were headed for another week of escalation in the war. On Saturday night, President Trump posted on Truth Social that he was giving Iran 48 hours to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz or he would, quote, obliterate their power plants. Well, Iran didn't back down. They said that if Trump did attack their power plants, they would attack power plants in countries across the region. So, yeah, it looked like we were headed for more bad news. But we just got some major developments this morning. As I'm recording this, President Trump just posted on Truth Social that he is delaying the military strikes on Iran's power plant and energy infrastructure since saying that the US and Iran have had good and productive conversations over the last couple of days regarding a resolution to the conflicts. So this was the first sign of a de escalation in the war and markets are absolutely loving it. It might finally be a good day to open up the public app and check your portfolio. We haven't had one of those days in a while. This is still a developing situation. Obviously we're staying on top 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 Palantir and the Pentagon. The Pentagon is officially adopting Palantir's AI as its core U.S. military system. In a memo seen by Reuters, the U.S. deputy Secretary of Defense said to Pentagon leaders that Palantir's Maven smart system will become an official program of record. This basically locks in Maven as a core part of the US Military's infrastructure, guaranteeing long term funding and fast tracks adoption across all branches of the military. Maven is a software platform that can analyze massive amounts of data across drones, satellites, radars, intelligence reports, and sensors. It then uses AI to identify possible threats or enemy targets in real time, talking about enemy vehicles and weapon stockpiles. Maven has essentially become the military's AI brain, and this technology is being used right now in active operations. So this is a huge win for Palantir. You know, most of Palantir's recent growth has come from its commercial side of the business, but government contracts continue to serve as a foundational source of revenue. Last summer, the company signed a $10 billion contract with the U.S. army. On top of that, Palantir already had a contract with the Pentagon that is worth up to $1.3 billion. So the company has basically become the backbone of how the US Military uses AI. Now, what's interesting here is that despite this growing relationship between the US military and Palantir, the AI model' powering Palantir's Maven system is Anthropic's cloth. And remember, the Pentagon just blacklisted Anthropic. A couple weeks ago, anthropic had a $200 million contract with the Pentagon. In fact, Anthropic was the first AI model developer used in classified operations by the Defense Department. But then things blew up after it came out that Claude was used in the US Military operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year. I guess Anthropic wasn't happy about that, and the company told the Pentagon that it wouldn't allow CLAUDE to be used for autonomous weapons, weapons or mass surveillance. The Pentagon responded by designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk. So that would mean that Palantir, who works with the US Government would have to not use Anthropic's models to power their systems. The problem though is that Anthropic is so integrated into Palantir's tech stack and also the Pentagon that the Pentagon is now giving exemptions for using Claude for mission critical activities. But yeah, Palantir has been a big winner recently. Their stock is up around 5% today and up about 15% since the war with Iran started back on February 28th. Let's shift gears and talk about prediction markets. You know, prediction markets have become really popular over the last year or so, but they're starting to get some backlash, especially when it comes to sports betting. See, these prediction market platforms like Cal and Polymarket allow users to trade events, contracts. And these platforms started off by letting people trade on who will win an election or what the Fed might do when it comes to interest rates. But lately these platforms have all become a pseudo sports betting platform. Based on recent data, over 90% of the trading on Kalshi is sports related. The thing is, these prediction markets are regulated by the Commodities Future Trading Commission, the cftc. So since they're regulated by the federal government, that allows Kalshi and Polymarket to allow sports betting in states where it's not allowed under state law, like Texas and California. And that has made some states really furious. For example, Nevada got a temporary restraining order against Kalshee just last week. Arizona went even further and filed criminal charges charges against Cowshi's parent company for operating an illegal gambling business without a license in Massachusetts and Michigan have also sued the company. And now the Senate is getting involved. They're planning to introduce a bill that would ban prediction market platforms like cowshe and Polymarket from offering sports betting in casino style games. Now Kalshi is fired back. They're saying that banning sports betting on regulated prediction markets would just push the activity offshore where there's zero oversight. They also said the bill is motivated by casino interests that feel threatened by competition. The DraftKings stock did get a 5% pop this morning after this report about the Senate bill came out. Now personally, I like prediction markets especially to get economic data like what the market thinks interest rates will be by the end of the year. But I don't like the fact that sports betting is mixed in with it. I feel like the sports betting stuff should be a separate platform altogether. So yeah, we'll see what ends up happening. Definitely something to keep an eye on. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Airline stocks are a big winner today following President Trump pausing airstrikes on Iran. Airline stocks like Delta, American Airlines and United Airlines have been hit hard this past month because of rising jet fuel prices, which have jumped around 60% since the start of the war. The cost of fuel is an airline's second largest expense after labor and generally accounts for about 20 to 30% of all annual operating costs across the global aviation industry. Higher fuel costs eat into profits. So a de escalation in the war could lead to lower jet fuel prices. And that's why airline stocks are up around 5% this morning. Now on the flip side, energy companies are lower today. No surprise here. The oil companies like Chevron, Exxon and Conical Phillips make more profit when oil prices are higher. So if there is a resolution to the war, this trade of Hormuz opens back up. It could push oil prices lower again. And that's why stocks like Chevron, Exxon and Conical Phillips are all in the red this morning. Quick update on that. These stocks were in the red initially, but now they're back in the green. I guess the market is not quite convinced that oil prices are about to go lower. Let's wrap up the show with a fun fact. Amazon just had their biggest movie debut ever. The movie Project Hail Mary starring ryan Gosling made $80 million at the domestic box office and over $60 million overseas. I saw the trailer for this movie. It's a space movie based on Andy Weir's novel. The same guy who wrote the Martian, which is also a fantastic movie. This movie got some excellent reviews and personally I'm just happy to see a non sequel movie do well at the box office. It's just great to know that people still want to watch some cool space movies on a big screen. You know, I really wanted to go see it in IMAX over the weekend, but the movie is over two and a half hours long, so it's really hard to do that with two little kids. I guess I'll have to wait for it to come out on prime video. So yeah, movie theater is having a strong start to the year. I wonder if it's just a matter of time before Netflix starts releasing movies in theaters too. 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 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.