← The Rundown
The Rundown
Warren Buffett Makes Biggest Deal in 3 Years, Apple Shelves Vision Pro for Smart Glasses
00:09:18
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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, October 2nd. In today's episode, we'll tell you about Warren Buffett's biggest move in three years and why it might be his last. We also look at why Apple is ditching the Apple Vision Pro and how many cars Tesla delivered in Q3. Then stick around to the end of the show to learn about the shocking stat regarding PE firms and McDonald's. It's not what you think. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. The stock market was flying on Wednesday despite the drama surrounding the government Shutdown. The S P 500 rose 0.3% to close at another record high. And the Nasdaq did even better. It was up 0.5%, powered by a rally in big tech stocks. Six of the seven Magnificent Seven stocks were in the green on Wednesday, led by a 3% pop in Tesla stock. And it wasn't just stocks. The crypto market also got their mojo back. Bitcoin and Ethereum have rallied nearly 10% in the last week, with Bitcoin now trading near $120,000 again, which is the highest level since mid August. So the markets have pretty much shrugged off the government shutdown. And it's just another example of how resilient the markets have been this year. You know, if you think about it, we've been through multiple tariff shocks, constant geopolitical tensions, Trump threatening Jerome Powell's job every other week, and yet the stock market is at record highs right now. So investors aren't going to let a little government shutdown freak them out, at least for Now. But yeah, Q4 is off to a good start. And fun fact about Q4, it's historically been the best quarter of the year for the stock market. So maybe the stock market rally might continue for the rest of the year despite all the uncertainty. Now, as a quick reminder, earnings season is right around the corner and stuff. Since we won't be getting economic data from the government during the shutdown, I think investors are going to be paying even more attention to the earnings to gauge the health of the economy. So yeah, I am pumped for the next few weeks. We're going to be covering all that for you, including updates on the government shutdown over the next few days, weeks, or however long it lasts. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast. To stay in the loop, let's run through some headlines, starting with Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced its biggest deal in three years. Berkshire is buying Occidental Petroleum's chemical unit oxychem in a $9.7 billion all cash deal. Oxychem is a manufacturer of industrial chemicals, things like chlorine and sodium hydroxide. These chemicals go into products used for things like cleaning swimming pools, recycling batteries, and producing paper. And for Berkshire, this deal makes a lot of sense. Berkshire is sitting on a record $344 billion in cash. And Warren Buffett isn't using that money to buy stocks. In fact, he's trimming his portfolio. So instead he's using his cash pile to buy a boring chemical company. Honestly, it's a classic Buffett move. While everyone else is focused on spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI and buying a depreciating data center, Warren Buffett is using his money to buy a stable cash flowing chemical company. And in an industry that isn't going away anytime soon, OxyCam brought in nearly $5 billion in sales over the past year. Now the other factor here is that Berkshire already owns a 28% stake in Occidental. And Occidental has been struggling lately because of their heavy debt load from their previous acquisitions of companies like Anadarko and Crown Rock. So this sale of Oxychem to Berkshire will help Occidental pay down some of that debt, which should help Occidental stock price, which, which again, Warren Buffett owns a ton of. So this seems like a pretty smart move by Warren Buffett and it might be his last big deal as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway because remember, Warren Buffett is stepping down as CEO at the end of this year. So if this ends up being his last major deal, it's going to be classic Warren Buffett. It would be hilarious though if he pulled a curveball and announced like a hundred billion dollar partnership with OpenAI to fund their next data center. Let's shift gears and talk about another one of Warren Buffett's major investments. Apple. Apple is pausing the development on their next iteration of the Vision Pro and instead focusing on smart glasses. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who's a friend of the show, Apple was working on making a cheaper, lighter version of the Vision Pro, but they've reassigned those engineers to work on their smart glasses instead. I guess the success of Meta smart Glasses got Apple's attention and and Apple is now rushing to get their version out by 2026 or 2027. According to Mark Gurman, Apple is developing two versions of the smart glasses. One with a built in display and one without a display. And honestly, I think this is the right move. I think Apple finally realizes that VR is never going to be a mainstream hit because people just don't want to wear a giant thing on their face. Smart glasses, on the other hand, could be a nice tech accessory to the iPhone. Kind of like how the Apple Watch is. So I'm pretty bullish on smart glasses. And, and yes, Apple is late again to the party when it comes to a new product, but I mean, their hardware integration is so good that they're likely going to offer a better experience than what Meta currently offers, especially for iPhone users. And I'm not trying to take a shot at Meta here. I like their smart glasses. I own a pair of the Meta Ray Bans, and apparently the demand for the new Meta Ray Ban displays have been off the charts. The Meta Ray Ban displays went on sale this week for $800 and they seem to be sold out everywhere. Like, I wanted to schedule a demo to try out these glasses and I can't seem to find any open slots until early November. So yeah, Meta might have another hit product on their hands. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Tesla stock is up this morning after reporting a surprise beat on vehicle deliveries. The company reported 497,000 vehicle deliveries in Q3, which is up 7% from last year and well ahead of Wall street estimates of 447,000. This growth came even as sales in Europe slowed and competition from Chinese EV giant BYD heated up. Now, Tesla did see a 21% jump in US sales as car buyers rushed to buy EVs before the EV tax credit expired on September 30th. And it wasn't just Tesla seeing a boost. Both GM and Ford also reported record EV sales yesterday. So yeah, Tesla's getting a nice short term boost. And the stock was up this morning, up almost 3%. But now it's back to being flat. Zooming out. Though it's been a great few months for a Tesla stock, it went up more than 40% in Q3, which brought it back into positive territory for the year after a brutal first half. And don't look now, but Elon Musk's net worth is getting close to $500 billion. Now on the flip side, shares of credit reporting giants like TransUnion in Equifax are getting hammered this morning. And after Fair Isaac, the company behind the FICO score, rolled out a new pricing model that makes it easier for banks to calculate and distribute FICO scores directly. See, typically, banks had to pay a fee to access credit scores from companies like Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. But now, with Fair Isaac's new pricing model, banks can pay Fair Isaac directly for FICO scores instead of going through the credit bureaus. So that's going to hurt the business of these credit bureaus, which is why their stock is down around 10% this morning, which is while Fair Isaac stock is up more than 25%. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. There are more private equity firms in the US than McDonald's locations. I know it sounds like a made up stat, but it's true. There are 19,000 PE firms in the US versus about 14,000 McDonald's. So technically it's easier to find someone trying to buy a company with leverage in America than than it is to grab a Big Mac. Now, the reason that we have so many PE firms these days is because of the era of low interest rates. From 2009 to 2021, interest rates were really low. So PE firms were popping up on every corner to take advantage of the access to cheap capital. But things are different now, right? Interest rates are higher and PE firms are struggling to outperform the market and raise new money. And that's why some in the industry think that we're going to see a consolidation in the PE space. So the number of private equity firms might start declining as they struggle to raise money. But yeah, the fact that the US currently has more PE firms than McDonald's might be the most American stat of all 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 nine extra seconds, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast. And 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. You know, we're cooking up a lot of stuff here in the background, from merch to improving the production of these videos. And we have some big guests coming up as well. So I appreciate everyone coming along for the ride as we try to improve the show. Thank you guys again 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.