The Rundown - Apple Post Strong iPhone Sales, Trump Picks Warsh as Next Fed Chair

Episode Date: January 30, 2026

Market update for Friday January 30, 2026Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode:Gold and silver pull back Trump picks Kevin Warsh to be next Chairman of the Federal ReserveApple posts a blowout earnings report as iPhone sales surge, but investors focus on rising costs and margin pressureOpenAI planning for Q4 IPOSandisk surges on booming AI-driven memory demand while KLA slides on supply constraintsElon considers potential SpaceX merger with xAI ahead of IPO

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Friday, January 30th. In today's episode, we'll tell you who Trump nominated to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. We'll also recap earnings from Apple and tell you about opening eyes plans to IPO. Then stick around to the end of the show to learn about Elon Musk's plans to merge all of his companies. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Markets went on a wild ride yesterday, bouncing off the lows, but still closing in the red. The S&P 500 was down as much as 1.5% before clung its way back to close down just 0.1%. The NASDAQ was down over 2% at its lows, but recovered to finish down 0.7%. Now, the tech sector was the worst performing yesterday because of a big sell-off in Microsoft. Microsoft stock tanked 10% yesterday, which is huge for a company this size. In fact, Microsoft lost over $350 billion in market cap, which is the single biggest one-day decline in history. The biggest loss still belongs to Invidio, which lost nearly $600 billion, almost exactly a year ago after Deepseek shocked everyone. You guys remember Deepseek, that was a crazy day.

But yeah, investors are freaking out again because Microsoft reported slower cloud growth, despite spending billions of dollars on AI. If you want a full recap of Microsoft's earnings, go check out yesterday's episode. We also covered Tesla and meta's earnings yesterday as well. Now, we've got to talk about gold and silver again. After hitting record highs, the prices are now crashing a bit. Gold went from $5,600 in ounce yesterday

down to about $5,000 this morning. Silver was up over $120 an ounce yesterday, but it's now below $100 today. These metals continue to trade like cryptocurrencies. It's absolutely wild. By the way, speaking of crypto, Bitcoin keeps dropping. It was down 5% yesterday. And it's now trading at $82,000, which is the lowest level since April of last year.

So yeah, I'm not sure when Bitcoin's going to get its mojo back. Now, the big news rocking the markets today is that President Trump has officially nominated Kevin Warsh to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Trump posted this morning about it on Trude Social. Now, this is a very interesting pick because Kevin Warsh is a former Fed governor. He served on the Fed board from 2006 to 2011. So he's not a total outsider. It's kind of a safe pick. And what's interesting is that Kevin Warsh has historically been hawkish on inflation,

meaning that he's been less enthusiastic to cut interest rates because he's concerned that inflation might take back up. But lately, he's changed his tone and he's echoed President Trump's criticism that the Fed has been too slow to cut interest rates. So there's kind of a mixed signal coming from Kevin Warsh right now. Now, he still needs to get confirmed by the Senate, but when an issue, If he does, he'll take over as Fed Chair in May, replacing Jerome Powell. So yeah, it was a very busy week, a lot going on.

And earnings season keeps rolling on next week. We're getting results from Google, Amazon, AMD, Eli, Lilly, and more. So if you're new here, you joined at a great time. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast and tuning in every morning to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Apple. Apple reported earnings last night. And they absolutely crushed it, but the stock is barely moving. Let's run through the numbers first.

Apple's revenues in Q4 jumped 16% to nearly $144 billion, blowing past the estimates of $138 billion. I mean, it was a monster quarter for Apple, and it was all thanks to the iPhone. iPhone sales were up 23% to $85 billion. In fact, this was the best iPhone growth in the December quarter in over a decade. CEO Tim Cook said the demand for the iPhone 17 was staggering and that Apple is now facing a supply crunch just to keep up with orders. So yeah, the iPhone 17 has been a big hit, especially in China. Apple's sales in China, including Taiwan and Hong Kong, jumped 38% to $25.5 billion. Now, China had become a weak spot for Apple recently due to competition from local phone makers like Huawei,

but Apple seems to be bouncing back. Tim Cook said they set an all-time record for iPhone upgrades in mainland China, and they also saw double-digit growth in people switching from other phone brands to the iPhone. So yeah, the numbers are huge for Apple, but the stock is barely moving. In fact, it's down 1% at the time of this recording. And the reason for that is because investors are more concerned about some of the challenges that Apple face moving forward. One of those is the increased cost of memory. The RAM prices have gone up 5x in the last few months as demand from AI data centers

has led to a supply crunch. And while Apple said that memory prices had a minimal impact last quarter, the company expects a much bigger hit in the current quarter, so that could hurt Apple's margins moving forward. And beyond memory, the other issue that Apple is facing is the chips that power the iPhone. Tim Cook said that Apple is facing supply constraints

on the advanced chips that power the iPhone, which are made by TSMC. The problem is that TSMC is prioritizing production of AI chips for Nvidia and AMD, which pay a higher price. So Apple might have to pay more money to TSM for their chips to get priority, and that could further squeeze margins. And then you add to the fact that Apple missed revenue estimates for their other business segments like Macs, wearables, and services, you can see why investors are a bit cautious, despite the blowout quarter from the iPhone sales. I think it'll be a very interesting year for Apple. iPhone demand has never been stronger, but the supply crunch, rising costs of memory and chips, and the pressure to finally release a functioning AI powered series is,

making investors a bit nervous. Let's shift gears and talk about OpenAI. According to the Wall Street Journal, Open AI is planning to go public in the fourth quarter of this year, and they're already meeting with Wall Street banks to prep for the IPO. You know, I think this is another sign that Open AI is really feeling the pressure from Anthropic because they're also rumored to IPO this year as well, and they have a ton of hype right now. Claude has been a big hit. Their enterprise business is gaining ground, and they also expect to break even by 2028, which is two years earlier than what Open AI is projecting. So I think Open AI is trying to go public sooner rather than later to raise as much money as possible before investors turn all their attention to Anthropic

and other AI companies. Now, Open AI needs a massive amount of capital to keep building their data centers and buy AI chips. In fact, Open AI is currently looking to raise $100 billion as part of their latest funding round that could value the company at $830 billion. Now, what's funny is that the Wall Street Journal also reported that Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in Open AI as part of this latest funding round. Keep in mind, Amazon is also one of the biggest investors and Anthropic. So Amazon is basically hedging its bets and backing both competitors. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Sandus shares are absolutely ripping after the computer storage company delivered an earnings trifect up.

They beat on the top line, they beat on the bottom line, and delivered strong guidance. The big driver here is, of course, AI. Data Center revenues jumped 64% in the quarter as cloud and AI companies scramble for more storage to support the increasingly data-hungry AI models. Management straight up admitted they couldn't meet all the demand last quarter. But what's really jaw-dropping is the company's guidance. Sandus told investors to expect up to $4.8 billion in revenue, which is nearly 65%. more than what Wall Street was expecting. So clearly, AI is not about GPUs anymore.

Memory and storage are becoming just as important. And that's why Sandus stock is up more than 20% at the time of this recording. And if you zoom out, this stock has gone up over 1,300% in the last 12 months. Now, on the flip side, shares of KLA are sliding despite the company beating on earnings. See, KLA makes advanced equipment used to manufacture semiconductors and companies like TSM rely on its tools to build. cutting as chips. But the stock is down because the company is dealing with higher input costs and tighter availability of key components, which could hurt their growth and their profit margins moving forward. As a result, KLA's stock is down around 7% this morning at the time

of this recording. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Elon Musk is thinking about merging SpaceX with his AI company XAI ahead of the SpaceX IPO planned for later this year. This is according to reporting from Reuters. Now, if this happens, this would put SpaceX, Starlink, Grock, and X, aka Twitter, all under one roof. I do wonder how SpaceX investors feel about this, though, because SpaceX is the leader in its category, while XAI is not. And what's great is that Kathy Wood from Arc Invest is coming on the podcast this week.

I'm talking to her in a couple of hours. She's been an investor in SpaceX for a long time, so I'll find out what she thinks about this potential merger. That interview will be posted on Sunday. keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode.

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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 for the deep dive. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play. Feel the fun with Play-Ojo. The online casino with all the latest slot and live casino games. What you win is yours to keep with no wagering requirements, instant payouts, and no minimum withdraws.

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