The Rundown - Amazon Adds Grubhub+ to Prime, Tesla Accelerates FSD Push in China

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Stock market update for May 30, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, May 30th. In today's episode, we tell you Tesla's latest moves in China and the competition they have to go up against. Also, Amazon Prime is getting a new perk. Foot Locker is making a comeback, and Salesforce is having a very tough day. And then stick around to the end of the show to find out who has the largest Bitcoin ETF. All right, let's go. Well, guys.

tough day for stocks on Wednesday. Things were down across the board. The Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ, all finished in the red. And the Dow especially has had a tough go recently, getting hammered since hitting 40,000 points a couple weeks ago. It's down more than 4% since then, but, you know, nobody cares about the Dowell sell. Whatever. Overall, though, it's been a great month for the S&P 500. It's up more than 4% in May, which is pretty great because, historically speaking, May has not been a great month for the stock market. According to the Dow Jones market data, the S&P 500 typically drops 0.1% in May. I guess that explains the old Wall Street saying sell in May and go away.

Well, that's definitely not the case this year. And the S&P 500 is up more than 11% this year so far. But here's a quick fun fact. 350 companies in the S&P 500 have underperformed the index, which means the index is being carried by the big names like Nvidia and other tech giants that are overperforming and doing a lot of the heavy lifting. I guess that's one benefit of investing in an overall index. so you can benefit from some of the big winners, like NVIDIA, which could carry your portfolio.

Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Tesla. Tesla is pushing hard to roll out autonomous driving technology in China. The EV maker reportedly registered their full self-driving software with the authorities in China, according to Reuters. Getting the green light from Chinese regulators would be huge for Tesla because they could start selling their full self-driving package in China and hopefully generate some revenue, which would make up for their dip in sales that they've had in China recently. According to the latest data, sales are down more than 7.5% through the first four months of the year.

But even with full self-driving in China, I mean, the Chinese EV market is competitive. There are at least 10 other companies offering level 2 autonomous driving tech in China, according to Reuters. And speaking of competition, BYD, which is an EV company in China backed by Warren Buffett, announced that they are launching two new hybrid sedans that have enough power to drive 1,300 miles without recharging or refueling. 1,300 miles.

That is insane. Why don't we have that in the U.S.? So yeah, Tesla has to compete with that. But not just that, they also are dealing with consumer preferences. A recent note from Goldman Sachs highlights how hybrids and hybrid plugins are providing to be more popular and are contributing to a global slowdown in sales for just fully electronic vehicles. What's funny is that in the most recent earnings call, Elon actually called out other automakers, for pulling back on EVs and focusing on hybrids,

saying that EVs will ultimately dominate the market. Now, I'm just a guy on the internet, but I kind of feel like hybrids are better, especially plug-in hybrids. Especially plug-in hybrids that can do 1,300 miles. And this is coming from someone who owns a Tesla. But, you know, I guess we'll see how it plays out. Let's shift gears and talk about a company

that seems to have very little competition, Amazon. Starting today, Amazon Prime members will have a free subscription to Grubhub, the food delivery service that I don't know anyone that uses. Amazon Prime members will be able to order directly, from the Amazon app and get free delivery on orders over $12. For Amazon, they're trying to sweeten the perks of Amazon Prime, which is started to get kind of expensive.

I mean, I know that we all kind of have it, but it costs like $139 a year now. So I guess they're hoping that having free delivery from Grubhub is a nice little bonus. Even though none of the good food places around my area use Grubhub. Actually, if you zoom out and look at the food delivery space, it's dominated by DoorDash and Uber Eats. These two companies make up 90% of the market share. So I guess this deal with Amazon will help Grubbub,

Hub grow too? Maybe. Now personally speaking, I'm an Uber Eats guy because every week I'll get like a 40% promo code and your boy takes full advantage of that. Does I mean, does anybody else get those because Uber just hands them out to me like almost every week. I know Uber's probably just trying to get me addicted to the platform and they're probably going to stop giving it to me as soon as I get addicted. But I'm going to enjoy it while I can. But those promos are probably not great for Uber's bottom line. Sorry Uber investors. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Starting with Foot Locker shares is up big this morning after the company reported first quarter earnings that showed signs of a possible turnaround.

Now, the revenue still drops. Same store sales declined by 1.8%, but that's much better than the 3% drop that analysts had expected. And moving forward, the company expects their sales for this year to be flat, which is an encouraging sign for investors. I mean, it's been a pretty tough year for Foot Locker. The stock is down more than 25% as a market close on Wednesday, but the company is trying to turn things around by closing. underperforming stores and remodeling their existing stores.

I mean, I haven't been to a foot locker in years, so I kind of want to check out these remodeled stores. It looks like the turnaround plan is starting to work. Investors like what they saw, and the stock popped more than 13% in the pre-market following these earnings. Looks like the company's really starting to find its footing again, right? I had to do it. I'm sorry, that's too easy.

A stock not doing so great this morning is Salesforce. Shares are plummeting after the software company missed revenue estimates for the core. This is the first time it's fallen below estimates since 2006. Now, if you don't know what Salesforce does, then don't worry. I don't think anyone really knows what they do. Supposedly, they provide software products for customer relationship systems, analytics, and communications. I guess they own Slack, so there you go. Now, Salesforce basically said companies were being more stingy with their budgets in the quarter,

maybe because they're spending all their money on AI or something. And they also expect their deals to shrink related to professional services for this year. Investors did not like that news, and the stock is down. down more than 15% in the pre-market. All right, let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Today's fun fact is about BlackRock. They now have the largest Bitcoin ETF, which holds about $20 billion,

dethroning the grayscale Bitcoin Trust. This is according to Bloomberg. Now, what's crazy is that BlackRock launched their Bitcoin ETF on January 11th after the SEC approved Bitcoin Spot ETFs, and they've quickly become the winner in this space. I think it's a combination of lower fees and also having a big brand in the ETF space, they've attracted the largest amount of inflows

compared to other Bitcoin ETFs that launched around the same time. I guess this goes to show that people really do like the convenience of investing in Bitcoin via ETFs. By the way, if you wanted to invest in a Bitcoin ETF or Bitcoin directly, you can do that on the public app.

Just a little plug for the main app. We'll put a link in the description. All right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, please consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. And don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. We put up a poll every day on every episode.

So if you're listening to this on Spotify, tap today's episode and vote in today's poll. The engagement really does help to show out. I don't know about you guys, but this week has really flew by. I mean, tomorrow's Friday. You're going to want to catch tomorrow's episode because we got Costco earnings coming out today after the market closed. And we're going to be recapping those on tomorrow's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Connor and Mike for all the hard work behind the scenes.

And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. This is the rundown. 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 Zayid Mani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by Open to the Public Investing Incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.