The Rundown - Adobe Loses its AI Shine, Rivian Shares Get Upgraded

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Stock market update for March 15, 2024. Get started with Public: ⁠Click Here⁠ The content of the podcast is for general and informational purposes only. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guest and the host. You should not take a mention of any asset, be it cryptocurrency or a publicly traded security as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold that cryptocurrency or security. Guests and hosts are not affiliated with or endorsed by Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult respective professionals. Full disclosures are in the channel description. Learn more at Public.com/disclosures. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There is a possibility of loss with any investment. Historical or hypothetical performance results, if mentioned, are presented for illustrative purposes only. Do not infer or assume that any securities, sectors or markets described in the videos were or will be profitable. Any statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements are strictly based on the current views, opinion, or assumptions of the person presenting them, and should not be taken as an indicator of performance nor should be relied upon as an investment advice.The content of the podcast is for general and informational purposes only. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guest and the host. You should not take a mention of any asset, be it cryptocurrency or a publicly traded security as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold that cryptocurrency or security. Guests and hosts are not affiliated with or endorsed by Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult respective professionals. Full disclosures are in the channel description. Learn more at Public.com/disclosures. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There is a possibility of loss with any investment. Historical or hypothetical performance results, if mentioned, are presented for illustrative purposes only. Do not infer or assume that any securities, sectors or markets described in the videos were or will be profitable. Any statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements are strictly based on the current views, opinion, or assumptions of the person presenting them, and should not be taken as an indicator of performance nor should be relied upon as an investment advice.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadamani, and today is Friday, March 15. In today's episode, we discussed the drop in stocks in crypto. What is going on? Who turned off the fun machine? We also talk about some technical issues at McDonald's that force some stores to close down. And then we highlight some stocks making moves today, like how Adobe might be losing some of its AI shine from last year. And then we end the show with some interesting facts about office occupancy.

Are workers actually going back to the office occupancy? office? Stick around to the end of the show to find out. All right, let's get into it. Let's start with a quick recap of stocks on Thursday. Not a great day. The Dow, S&P, NASDAQ all took a dip after yet another hotter than expected inflation report. Since inflation has proven to be stickier than expected, investors don't know what to expect from the Fed now when it comes to cutting interest rates. Remember, the Fed's target inflation rate is 2% and inflation's still hovering around the 3% range right now. Thankfully, we don't have to wait long to hear what the Fed has to say about all this, the Fed meeting is next week. And in that meeting, we're not expecting any rate cuts.

Right now, the market thinks there's a 99% chance the Fed keeps rates unchanged. But hopefully we'll get some insight from Jerome Powell on how the Fed is reacting to the fact that inflation is just kind of being annoyingly sticky. By the way, at the start of the year, markets were pricing in a greater than 60% chance of a rate cut the March Fed meeting. But yeah, that's totally off the table at this point. I don't know when we're going to get a rate cut next. I guess we'll find out more information from Jerome Powell next week. Make sure you guys are just. tuning into the show next week because we'll be recapping all of the most important comments that come from that meeting. Let's talk a little crypto because the stock market was not the only thing

having a bad day on Thursday. Crypto took a dive on Thursday afternoon. I mean, Bitcoin and crypto in general were running hot all week. Bitcoin made multiple all-time highs. It crossed $73,000 for the first time on Wednesday. Random meme coins were just moaning. It felt very 2021-ish. And then on Thursday afternoon, the air kind of came out a little bit. Bitcoin dropped almost 10% to below $68,000. Ether went from 4,000 all the way down to 3,600. I mean, it was red across the board. Somebody turned off the fun machine. But hey, it's crypto, so we should be used to this by now.

Alright, let's run through some headlines. Not gonna lie to you guys? Kind of a slow news day. Our top news for today is that McDonald's experienced a global tech outage that forced some restaurants to stop operations in some parts of the world. Can you imagine going to McDonald's to pick up your McGritle for breakfast and then being turned away? I mean, that would ruin my Friday.

The system issues seem to have occurred mostly in Japan. Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, and the UK. Now, McDonald's has come out and said that this is not a cybersecurity issue. Still no word on what the issue is and if it's officially been resolved yet. The other news that caught my attention was that Neo, a Chinese EV maker, is expected to release their mass market car in May. The mass market brand will be called Lee Dow, and it's going to be geared toward families. Neo has generally focused on making more premium luxury cars that sell for higher prices than even a Tesla. but they want to compete on the lower price point now.

So Tesla should expect some more EV competition in China this year. I feel like all the EV hype is in China right now, with BYD being the biggest EV maker in the world, and now Neo is getting in on the mass market EV space. I mean, probably not great news for Tesla and Tesla sales in China. All right, let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Starting with Rivian. Rivian stock is up more than 3% this morning after receiving an upgrade from Piper Sandler.

The analyst is feeling pretty optimistic about the upcoming rollouts of Rivian's new R2 and R3 SUVs. They point to the fact that the R2 SUV got 68,000 reservations in less than 24 hours. On a side note, it only cost a $100 deposit to reserve one of those vehicles, and the deposit is refundable. So, you know, not really that big of a commitment here. But it's a small glimmer of hope for the EV space, because as I mentioned in yesterday's show, the EV space has really been struggling this year. Go listen to the yesterday's show if you want more details on that, but as I think, potentially Fisker is preparing for bankruptcy and Tesla stock is down more than 35% this year. So yeah, not great, but maybe Rivian can be the one that stands out.

The R2s do look pretty sick. I'm not going to lie. I kind of want one. On the flip side, a company not doing so great. Adobe. Adobe stock dropped more than 10% yesterday after the report of their earnings. And their earnings were actually pretty strong. The revenues were up 11% to $5.18 billion. Their earnings per share beat Wall Street estimates, but their guidance for the upcoming quarter was lower than expected. Because again, Wall Street cares how your business is going to do moving forward, not just how it's doing looking back.

Adobe was kind of one of the winners of AI early on. Last year, Adobe announced a generative fill feature on Photoshop. They also had their Firefly AI services. But I think some of the AI shine is starting to come off a bit. So let's see if Adobe can bounce back from this and recapture some of that early AI hype. Also, in last quarter, they officially abandoned their $20 billion acquisition of the design software Figma, after the UK regulators found that to be anti-competitive. and they had to pay Figma a $1 billion termination fee.

Another stock struggling this morning is Ulta Beauty. After the beauty retailer forecasted full-year profits that were lower than Wall Street expectations. Alta says that the beauty industry has gotten more competitive. The beauty industry has seen a nice bounceback as more people are going back to offices and public gatherings, so the demand for makeup and skincare products have gone up, but that's also resulted in more competition in the space as well.

Ulta Beauty says that their long-term plan is to expand internationally. On a side note, every time my wife drags me into Ulta Beauty, that place smells incredible. I don't know what kind of scent they're using, but it's good. All right, let's wrap up the show with a fun fact. Today's fun fact is about office space. Guys, it's been four years since the pandemic. And according to the latest reports, office occupancy in the U.S. is around 60% of pre-pandemic levels. And that's on the peak days of the week. I know that we see a ton of headlines these days of companies calling workers back into the office, but we're still nowhere close to what it used to be like. Here are some interesting

headbits from this report. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the highest attendance days in the office. It's really no surprise there. And then Friday has by far the lowest occupancy. Friday's occupancy now is about 35% of what it used to be pre-pendemic. Again, not really surprising because, I mean, who really works on Fridays anymore anyways? Actually, I think the surprising part was that even 35% of people go into the office on Fridays. Shout out to those people. All right, guys, that's all I got for you guys this week. Another fantastic week in the books. We had a lot of ups and downs this week. Markets made all time highs and took a dip. Inflation came in hot.

Bitcoin made all time highs, took a dip. There was a lot going on. So I appreciate you guys listening in every day this week as we break down all the market drama. If you guys enjoyed the show, please get this podcast a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. An easy way to support the show. By the way, I just checked the charts. This podcast is now number 12 on the Spotify top business podcast list. So we're coming for that top 10.

Five-star ratings and voting in the polls would really help that out. All right, guys. Thank you again for joining this weekend. And we'll see you guys back here on Monday. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy, sell or hold that security. Rundown guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings or its subsidiaries.

You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult. Respective professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Zaid Admani. Brokage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by Open to the Public Investing Incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.