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Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaydad Mani and Today is Thursday, February 19th. In today's episode, we'll tell you what the latest Fed meeting minutes said. We'll also recap earnings from Walmart, Figma and Carvana, then stick around to the end of the show to find out how Amazon plans to compete with Walmart. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, we finally got a spark in the stock market on Wednesday. The S P 500 was up 0.6% while the Nasdaq was up 0.8%. It was a broad based rally. More than 315 stocks in the S P finished in the green yesterday with the energy and tech sector being the two best performing. In fact, every single Max 7 stock was higher yesterday. And even software stocks caught a bid yesterday with the software ETF adding more than 1%. It's still down 20% for the year, but at least there's some signs of life. Honestly, I was kind of surprised the markets rallied after seeing the Federal Reserve meeting minutes from the January meeting. The Fed publishes their minutes a few weeks after each meeting. It gives a detailed summary of what officials discuss. And I don't usually pay too close attention to it, but what caught my attention about these minutes was the hawkish tone. These minutes showed that several Fed officials floated the idea of a potential rate hike if inflation stays above the 2% target, which is which it currently is. Now. To be clear, that's not the base case. Most Fed officials still expect inflation to gradually fall this year. But the Fed seems to be in no rush of a rate cut right now. But regardless of that, the market shrugged off that news and rallied. Now we'll have to see if this rally has any momentum now. Something that has absolutely no momentum right now whatsoever is bitcoin. Price of bitcoin continues to fall slowly, bleeding every single day. It's currently under $66,000, hovering near its 2026 lows. You know, I always say that the narrative for crypto can flip at. There just seems to be no enthusiasm right now. Michael Saylor though, he keeps buying millions of dollars of bitcoin every week and posting AI generated images of him wearing like a bitcoin chain or something. It's not helping the price though. I gotta say, I'm just glad to see a broad based rally in the stock market. We'll see how things shake out the rest of the week and the rest of the month. We're gonna be staying on top of all this stuff. 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 Walmart. Walmart reported earnings this morning and it was kind of a mixed bag. The numbers for Q4 came in solid. Revenues increased by 5.6% to nearly $191 billion, slightly ahead of expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came in at 74 cents per share, also topping estimates. And US comparable sales jumped 4.6%, with online sales in the US up a massive 27%. So their E commerce business continues to put up strong growth. Overall, Walmart had a strong holiday quarter, but the upcoming guidance did come in a bit soft. Walmart is forecasting net sales growth of just three and a half to four and a half percent this year, which is below the 5% that analysts were expecting now. This was the first earnings report under new CEO John Furner, who officially took over as CEO on February 1st from Doug McMillan, who ran the company for 14 years. John Furner previously ran Walmart's unique US division, which makes up like 70% of their total revenue. So he has experience running a big division and you know, he has big shoes to fill, especially right now. You know, the market tends to pay close attention to Walmart's earnings. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world and seen as a barometer for the economy. And right now the company's numbers are suggesting a relatively healthy consumer and a business that has so far been able to withstand the volatile tariff environment. But there's extra attention on Walmart's earnings right now because of the company's stock. Stock in valuation Walmart stock has outpaced the S&P 500 and other retailers over the last year, jumping over 20%. They're trading at a forward PE ratio of 45, which is the highest that it's ever been and higher than tech companies like Nvidia and Google. And there seems to be no signs of a slowdown. Walmart stock did initially drop 2% once the earnings came out, likely because of the soft guidance. But now the stock is up 2% at the time of this recording. It's just kind of funny how we're in the middle of a huge technological boom with AI and Walmart. Walmart has become the hottest stock in the market right now. Let's stick with earnings and talk about Figma. You know, it's been a weird few months for Figma. They went from the hottest IPO last summer jumping 200% on their first day of trading to now trading 25% below their IPO price. Well, things might finally be turning around for the design company. They reported earnings last night and revenues grew 40% year over year to $304 million, beating estimates. And adjusted earnings came in at $0.08 per share versus the $0.07 that was expected. So they be on top line and bottom line and they're putting up solid growth despite the fears of being disrupted by AI. In fact, Figma is leaning into AI. They partnered with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google for their Figma make tool, which creates interfaces and design from just prompts weekly. Users of the tool grew 70% in the fourth quarter. I think another encouraging sign from these earnings is that Figma's biggest customers are spending more, not less. So AI hasn't impacted their business in a negative way just yet. In fact, AI is probably going to help their business because they plan to start charging for AI usage on top of subscriptions, so their revenues could accelerate even further. Now, looking ahead, the company expects 30% revenue growth for 2026, which is better than expected. Now, what's crazy is that initially Figma Stock popped like 15% after the earnings were announced, but now it's given back all those gains and the stock is actually in the red at the time of this recording. It's never good when a company beats on earnings across the board and stock still drops. So, yeah, just a brutal time for software companies right now. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Etsy shares are surging this morning after announcing a deal to sell Depop, which is a secondhand clothing app, to eBay for $1.2 billion. Now, what's funny is that Etsy actually bought depop back in 2021 for $1.6 billion. So they're selling it for less than they paid for. Even though Depop has had solid growth. Last year, gross merchandise sales more than 32% year over year, with active sellers jumping 41%. Personally, I've never used Depop before, but yeah, it's very popular. But the reason that Etsy is selling it is because they want to focus on fixing their core marketplace, which has been struggling. Investors seem to be happy with this move, and Etsy stock is up more than 15% this morning at the time of this recording. And as for ebay, this acquisition makes a ton of sense. They've been leading into collectibles and authenticated luxury goods, and Depop gives them a direct access to younger shoppers because about 90% of Depop users are under the age of 34. Investors like the sound of that. Ebay stock is up around 6% this morning at the time of this recording. Now, on the flip side, Carvana shares are sliding after reporting mixed earnings. Revenues actually beat expectations, coming in at $5.6 billion of 58% year over year. Retail units sold jumped 43% for the year, and the company continues to gain market share in the used car space. The problem, though, was profitability. Reconditioning used cars is getting more expensive and management warned that those higher costs will carry into Q1. As a result, Carvana stock is down around 7% this morning at the time of this recording. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Amazon has officially overtaken Walmart to be the biggest company in the world for annual revenue. Amazon did $717 billion in revenue last year. Walmart did 713 billion. Now, to be fair, Walmart is still the largest retailer in the world. Amazon made over $128 billion from AWS, which is their cloud business. So if you strip that out from Amazon's revenue, then Walmart is still the retail king. But you know, Amazon's cloud business is way more profitable than selling paper towels and groceries, which is why Amazon's market cap is over $2 trillion, while Walmart is right at 1 trillion. Now, an advantage that Walmart has over Amazon when it comes to retail is physical stores. Walmart has over 10,000 physical stores and approximately 90% of the US population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart. Amazon, on the other end, has struggled with physical stores. Yes, they own Whole Foods, but they closed down a dozen of their small Amazon Go stores recently. There was a recent report that says that Amazon is planning to open a superstore similar to a Walmart. Amazon just got approval to build a 233,000 sq ft mega store outside of Chicago. That store is like the size of two Target stores. Now, half the store will be groceries and general merchandise, while the other half will handle fulfillment for online orders. Basically, it's a superstore in a warehouse under one roof. And honestly, I kind of like that strategy here from Amazon. We'll see if Amazon can make that work. Maybe in a few years we're going to be going to Amazon Superstores to buy groceries and pick up our Amazon packages. Let me know what you guys think. Do you think that Amazon should try to expand their physical locations or just stick to E commerce? 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 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.