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Public.com presents the rundown your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zeydadmani and today is Wednesday, September 15th. In today's episode, we'll give you the latest update on the TikTok ban and tell you which US investors are finalizing a bid to buy the company. We'll also Preview the upcoming StubHub IPO and tell you why China just banned Nvidia chips. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out which company just bought the Fuck Fyre Festival. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Markets had a pretty quiet day on Tuesday with the S P and Nasdaq both dropping just 0.1%. I think Wall street was just taking the kind of chill in preparation for the post Fed meeting rally or sell off, depending on what happens at the Fed meeting today and what Jerome Powell says in his press conference this afternoon. At this point, everyone is expecting a 25 basis point cut. Some even think we might be getting a surprise 50 basis point. Really curious to see what kind of vibe Jerome Powell will give off in the press conference. Is he going to hint at more rate cuts this year, pointing to the softening labor market? Or is he going to talk more about inflation still being above the Fed's 2% target? So I'll be tuning into the press conference which starts at 2:30pm Eastern time. I'm sure the markets will be going on a wild ride, as they usually do when Jerome Powell talks. We'll break down the Fed's decision and all the interesting comments from Jerome Powell in the press conference and how the markets reacted to everything on on tomorrow's show. So make sure you guys tune into that. To stay in the loop, let's run through some headlines starting with TikTok. There has been some major developments regarding the TikTok ban. The TikTok ban deadline was today, but President Trump signed an executive order pushing the TikTok ban for the fourth time now to December 16th. And this time there's finally some real progress on a deal that could keep the app alive in the US Long term. Remember, there is a US Law right now stating that TikTok cannot operate in the US as long as it's majority owned by a Chinese company. Well, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal, multiple US Companies and investors are finalizing a deal to buy the US operations of TikTok. This deal is being led by the tech giant Oracle, along with the private equity company Silver Lake Capital and the venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz. These group of investors are planning to buy TikTok's US operation from TikTok's current Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The US investors would hold 80% of TikTok, while ByteDance would own 20. The board of directors of the TikTok US company would be mostly American, with even one seat designated by the US Government, which is kind of weird. Now, the biggest sticking point around a TikTok sale has always been TikTok's algorithm. It's what makes TikTok so good and addicting. This algorithm is owned by ByteDance, and under Chinese law, the Chinese government has to sign off on any sale of the tech. So the workaround here is that the US TikTok company would license the recommendation algorithm from ByteDance, and American engineers would use that tech to recreate and maintain a US Only version. So they're planning to license the tech, but make it American. And for all this to work, US users of TikTok will have to download a new US only version of the TikTok app that, according to reporting, is already under development.
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So.
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So I wonder if that means that US users on TikTok will only get served US content, which would be kind of a bummer, you know? So there's still some questions surrounding this whole deal. We still haven't seen a price tag that U.S. investors are going to be paying for the 80% control of the U.S. version of TikTok. But the wheels seem to be in motion, and President Trump is expected to have a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday to potentially seal the deal. So, yeah, TikTok might not be going away here in the US but it could be changing. And I wonder if this US Version of the algorithm is going to be good enough to. To keep users around, or is everyone just going to go to Instagram Reels or YouTube. I guess we'll have to see. Let's shift gears and talk about StubHub. The ticketing platform will finally hit the public markets today. StubHub is pricing its IPO at $23.50 a share, which is at the midpoint of the $22 to $25 range that was set last week. Now, this would value StubHub at $8.6 billion, which is about half of what it was reportedly seeking before it started the IPO process, according to CNBC. Now, this is StubHub's third attempt of going public. The last time was back in April, but then the markets had a meltdown after Trump's Liberation day tariffs. So StubHub backed off. Now, as for the financials of the company, StubHub sold about $8.7 billion in gross ticket sales last year. But there are some questions around the growth, as the company faces tough competition from companies like Ticketmaster, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek. StubHub's revenues grew just 3% in the first half of 2025, and the company is losing money. They lost $35.9 million last year, which is up from the $29.7 million in 2023. On top of that, profitability has been slipping. Their EBITDA margins have dropped from 26% in 2023 to 12% in the first half of this year, and that's far below StubHub's 35 to 40% target. The company is blaming this on heavy marketing costs tied to building up their new direct to sales business. StubHub has been leaning hard on this direct to sales business. They see it as a $153 billion opportunity, which is way bigger than the resale market it currently dominates. But they're still very early in this, though. StubHub brought in just $100 million in gross ticket sales from the direct sales business last year. That's just 1% of their total gross ticket volume. And most of that came from the Yankees. So today's IPO will tell us if investors are buying the StubHub growth story or if they see this as another ticketing resale platform. StubHub will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under ticker symbol stub. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Alibaba shares are up nearly 3% this morning after the Chinese tech giant secured a major customer for its AI chips. The client is China Unicom, the country's second largest telecom company. They're going to use Alibaba's AI chips to power a massive new data center project. Now, on top of that, there has been some breaking news this morning coming from the Financial Times. They're reporting that the Chinese government has banned tech giants like Alibaba and ByteDance from buying Nvidia's new AI chips designed for the Chinese market. Chinese regulators are saying that Chinese companies like Huawei have now closed the performance gap with Nvidia, so domestic firms should be the priority when it comes to securing AI chips. In fact, the Chinese government went as far to order these tech companies to stop testing Nvidia chips immediately. So obviously, this is great news for Chinese chip makers like Alibaba and Huawei, but not great news for Nvidia. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that he was disappointed in this news. It also adds to the China US Trade drama. But surprisingly, Nvidia stock hasn't taken a big hit so far. It's only down around 1% this morning on this news. Now, a stock taking a bigger hit this morning is General Mills. Their shares are down despite the cereal and food giant beating earnings for the quarter and keeping its 2026 outlook. The problem for General Mills has been growth, or I guess the lack of growth. Their net sales were down south 7% last quarter and the company has been in a multi year struggle to revive demand. You know, kids these days aren't eating as much cereal as we did back in the day. So General Mills is trying a bunch of stuff. They're ramping up advertising, they're doing more in store promotions, even hosting events to push their brands. They've even made changes to their product portfolio, selling off their yogurt brands in June, such as Gogurt and Yoplait, which to me are the two best things they have. But the company wants to focus more on other categories. So far, these moves haven't resulted in a turnaround just yet. Now, General Mills is excited about the fresh pet food category under their Blue Buffalo brand. Now, it's a growing market, but for now, investors aren't impressed. And shares of General Mills are down more than 3% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Limewire has bought the rights to the Fyre Festival on eBay for $245,000. Now, for all my millennials out there, they probably remember lim. It's how we used to acquire music back in the day. It wasn't legal per se, but I'm pretty sure I can't get in trouble for saying this anymore, right? Statute of limitations and all. Anyways, I didn't even know that limewire was still around. Apparently they did shut down back in 2010, but came back in 2022 as an NFT platform and now they've acquired the rights to the Fyre Festival. And as for the Fyre Festival, it's become an iconic meme at this point. If you guys remember, this festival took place back in 2017 and it was supposed to be this ultra luxury music festival in the Bahamas and it turned out to be an absolute disaster. There have been multiple documentaries about the Fyre Festival and I've watched all of them. Things got so bad for the Fyre Festival that The founder, Billy McFarlane, even went to federal prison for four years on fraud charges. He was released in 2022 and I guess he still owned the Fyre Festival brand and now he just sold it to Limewire. As for Limewire's plans, they want to use the Fyre Festival brand to launch real world experiences, whatever that means. But they did emphasize they won't be bringing back the actual festival itself, which I think is a shame. You know, I think we need to bring it back and do the Fyre Festival right this time. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like 7 extra seconds, consider giving us a 5 star rating on Apple Spotify, 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 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.
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And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
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Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
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Cut the camera. They see us.
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Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Fairy Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
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Excludes Massachusetts Bundle and Safe. With Expedia, you were made to follow your favorite band and from the front row we were made to quietly save you. More Expedia made to Travel savings vary and subject to availability. Flight inclusive packages are at all protected.