The Rundown - Apple Deals with AI Employee Exodus, Taiwan Semi Boosts 2025 Sales Outlook

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Stock market update for October 16, 2025.Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@therundowndaily⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, October 16th. In today's episode, we'll tell you about the AI brain drain happening at Apple and some new product announcements from them. We also dive into earnings from TSM and tell you why Salesforce stock is seeing a pop this morning. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out about the biggest finance fat finger mistake in history that just happened yesterday and why it's making some people nervous about stable coins. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, Wednesday was another choppy day

in the markets, but this time with a happy ending. Stock started off hot, then dipped in the red by midday, but ultimately closed higher with the S&P 500 adding 0.4%. And the NASDAQ was up 0.7%. The big The overhang continues to be the U.S.-China trade tensions, which has everyone on edge a bit. It also doesn't help with the government shutdown is now in day 16 and likely headed into the third week of gridlock. And since the government has been shut down, we haven't gotten any government data, including the CPI inflation report, which was supposed to come out this week. And that makes it tough for both investors and the Federal Reserve to get a clear read on the

economy right now. So for now, the only thing that investors have to go off of is earnings. And look, so far earnings have been pretty solid. I know we're still really early, but according to facts set, analysts expect the overall S&B 500 earnings to grow around 8% for Q3. That would mark the ninth straight quarter of earnings growth for the index. So we might be in for another strong earnings season. We'll have to see if that's enough for investors to overlook the China trade tensions in the

government shutdown. We're going to be keeping a close eye on all the major earnings coming up. Like next week, we're going to hear from Netflix, Tesla, and Intel, just to name a few. So make sure you guys are subscribers. to the podcast and tuning in every day to stay in the loop. Also, a quick request from you guys. We're going to try to answer some listener questions on an episode pretty soon. So if you guys have any questions for us, leave it in the comments on Spotify, YouTube,

or you can even DM us on Instagram. In fact, you can even email us a video of yourself asking a question to the rundown at public.com. And we'll try to answer as many questions as we can. And yes, the merch is still coming. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Apple. Apple just lost another key player from their AI team thanks to Meta. Kay Yang was leading a team at Apple called Answers, Knowledge, and Information,

and they were working on making Siri more like Chat GPT. No, Yang was a pretty big deal. He reported directly to Apple's head of AI, John Jin Andrea. But now he's going to be reporting to someone at Meta. You know, Meta continues to poach AI talent from every major tech company with massive offers. According to Bloomberg, roughly a dozen senior AI resource. researchers have already left Apple in the past few months, including the head of its foundation model group, Ruman Peng. He also ended up going to Meta, and it looks like more departures could be coming.

Apple still hasn't figured out their AI strategy, and it's not a good look for them. You know, for one, they refuse to write blank checks to AI talent like Meta is, even though they desperately need the talent to make improvements to their AI offering. But then again, Meta hasn't really blown anyone away with their AI stuff. I mean, the only thing they've released is an AI video slop app called Vibes, which was not great. So maybe all the billions that Zuck is spending isn't really going to pay off either. But for Apple, they've been talking about a revamp Siri for years now. And it's expected to launch in March of 2026.

Now, on top of this new series, according to Bloomberg's Mark German, who's front of the show, Apple will also be launching some new home hub devices around the same time, which is Apple's answer to the Amazon Echo. So in order for that home hub to be good, Siri has to be good. Speaking of hardware, Apple also did a low-key launch yesterday of their M5 chip. This new chip will be going into the Mac. The MacBook pros, the iPad pros, and the Vision Pro, apparently they still sell that. And this new M5 chip is 3.5 times faster in AI performance compared to the M4.

Then again, no one's really using AI on these Apple devices in the first place. But yeah, I think ultimately Apple is going to have to find an AI company to acquire. Software just really isn't their thing. They continue to lose talent. So I think it's time for Tim Cook to open up the checkbook and make a big acquisition. They should have bought Anthropic when they had the chance. It's too late now. Now, sticking with the AI theme, let's talk about chips.

The biggest chip manufacturer in the world, TSM just reported earnings this morning, and they had a monster quarter. TSM reported a 39% jump in profits to $14.8 billion last quarter, blowing past estimates and hitting another record high. Revenues were also up 30% year over year to $33 billion. You know, TSMC is a critical player in the AI boom because they're the only ones that physically make the advanced AI chips for Nvidia, AMD, Apple, essentially everyone. The sports analogy I like to use is that Nvidia is the star quarterback of the AI boom.

They get all the hype, they get all the press. But TSMC is the offensive line. They might not be flashy, but without TSMC, Nvidia in the entire AI industry probably wouldn't exist. You know, TSMC has a monopoly when it comes to manufacturing because they're the only chip manufacturer that has the expertise to make these super complex AI chips. Samsung and Intel are trying to catch up, but as of right now, they aren't close to TSMC. And according to the CEO of TSMC, the demand for these advanced chips from

Nvidia, AMD, Apple, and others just keeps accelerating, which is a tail win for TSM moving forward. The company said they were raising their 2025 revenue growth forecast again to mid-30% growth. I mean, investors have been paying attention to TSM for a while now. The stock is up more than 50% in 2025, and it's up another 2% this morning following the earnings. I guess the key question for TSM moving forward is will Intel or Samsung ever catch up to their capabilities? Because as of right now, from everything that I've read, it doesn't seem like anyone is even close. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.

Salesforce shares are jumping this morning after the company said they expect their revenues to reach $60 billion by 2030. Now, just for some context here, Salesforce's revenues in fiscal 2024 was around $35 billion. So that $60 billion target would mean that Salesforce would be back to growing more than 10% a year, which they haven't done in over a year. Salesforce continues to believe that AI will be a growth driver for their business. They have a product called Agent Force, which is an AI powered customer service platform, which connects large language models from OpenAI and Anthropic directly to company data, and companies like Pepsi, FedEx, and more are already using it.

Salesforce also announced they were planning to buy back $7 billion worth of shares. So all of that is pushing Salesforce stock up more than 5% this morning. I just find it kind of funny the stock moves so much based on projections for 2030. I mean, AI superintelligence might take over the world by that point, if you believe all the stuff coming out of Open AI and Anthropic. Now let's talk about United Airlines. Their shares are trading lower this morning following their earnings report. The airline reported better than expected profits, but slightly weaker revenue.

See, unlike the rest of the airline industry, United Airlines has been expanding its capacity. their Q3 capacity increased by 7%. But all that extra flying impacted prices, their unit passenger revenues drop by 3.3% overall, including a 7% drop on international routes. But still, United Airlines points to strong demand for premium and first class seating, which is what Delta also said last week in their earnings.

United said that revenues from their first class and other upgraded cabins rose by 6%. Still, that wasn't enough to make investors happy shares of United are down more than 2% in pre-market trading in reaction to the earnings. You know, I'm someone who usually flies United because I live in Houston and Houston is a major hub for them. I'm just really hyped that United is starting to roll out Starlink Internet services on their planes. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact.

PayPal accidentally minted $300 trillion worth of their stable coins yesterday. See, PayPal partners with a company called Paxos to handle its crypto operations. And someone over there apparently fat fingered the system and accidentally created $300 trillion. of PayPal USD tokens, which is actually the sixth largest stable coin in the world. Paxos said that it was just a technical error during an internal transfer, and they caught it within 20 minutes and burned the extra coins. No funds were lost, no customers were impacted, so ultimately it was a non-issue. And look, fat finger mistakes happen on Wall Street.

Hundreds of millions of dollars get sent to the wrong customer. Shout out Citibank. But usually things get reversed pretty quickly. But it is a reminder that even with stable coins gaining more popularity in entering the mainstream, that at the end of the day, stable coins are just powered by software running behind the scenes, and transactions can be reversed. It's not like a Bitcoin situation where the money's gone forever if you type in the wrong address. 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, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget the vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify, get in those listener questions. 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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