The Rundown - Apple Releases Siri Update with ChatGPT, GM Abandons Robotaxi Business

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Stock market update for December 11, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Wednesday, December 11th. In today's episode, we recap the CPI report from today and how it might impact the Fed's decision next week. We also tell you why GM is killing their robotaxy plans, chat GPT finally coming to Siri, and some major M&A drama.

Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why GameStop's stock is soaring, Macy's stock is tanking and why Microsoft almost bought some Bitcoin. Got a lot to cover today? Let's go. Well, guys, stocks were down for the second day in a row. Both the S&P and NASDAQ were down 0.3%. Like I said yesterday, I think investors might just be waiting for the CPI report to come out before making any major moves. While the report dropped this morning and thankfully, no surprises.

Inflation in November was 2.7% compared to November of, last year. That was as expected. And I think the markets are still expecting the Fed to cut rates by 25 basis points next week. According to the CME Fed watch tool, the markets are pricing in an 88% chance of a 25 basis point cut. So pretty strong indication right there. But we'll officially find out on Wednesday of next week, December 18th, when Jay Powell and the Fed gang meet for the FOMC meeting. And that interest rate decision is followed by a Jerome Powell press conference. I'm not going to lie, I'm kind of more interested in the press conference than I am the actual interest rate decision. His words are very influential. So we'll be tuning in and recapping that.

So next week should be a good one. Make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast and tuning in. Let's run through some headlines. Siri might finally be useful now because Apple just pushed an update that will integrate chat GPT with Siri. This is part of the iOS 18.2 release, which goes out today. It's also going to be coming to the iPad and Mac. The way this is going to work is if you ask Siri a complicated question, if Apple thinks this is better suited for chat GPT to answer, it'll push that question to chat GPT. So if it works the way they're describing it, that would be amazing. I mean, I typically wait at least a couple days before upgrading my iPhone to the latest iOS, but this time I might just do it day one because I really want to try this out.

By the way, Open AI has been releasing a lot of new stuff recently. In fact, the company is in the middle of what they're calling the 12 days of Shipmiss where they plan to release something new every single day. As part of the 12 days of Shipmiss, the company released SORA, which is their AI video generation model. They also released their $200 chat GPT Pro subscription last week. So we might have a couple more things in store. Sticking with the tech theme, GM is waving the white flag when it comes to Robotaxies. After spending more than $10 billion on the Robotaxy Unit, which is part of their cruise division, GM says they're not going to be funding the development anymore. And instead, they're going to fold that division into its broader tech team.

GM CEO Mary Barrow was kind of frank about it. Cruise just couldn't compete with the competition. It was costing them too much money and too much time, and they weren't making enough progress to justify all that expense. So they're killing it. Honestly, this is probably the right move, because when's the last time you heard of Cruise make any sort of hype when it comes to self-driving tech?

All of the hype is going to Tesla and Google's Waymo. Tesla's making these big promises showing off all these cool cars, and Waymo seems to be expanding to new cities every few months. It wasn't worth it for GM to continue to burn through billions of dollars if they're so far behind the competition. Investors seem to agree GM stock is up more than 2% on this news. Now we've got a couple of big mergers and acquisition news to talk about. Walgreens is in talks to sell itself to private equity firm Sycamore Partners. This is according to the Wall Street Journal.

And if this deal goes through, this would take the company's stock off the stock market. I mean, Walgreens has a lot of problems now, so maybe Sycamore can fix some of this stuff, like removing the locked plastic boxes from Walgreens shelves that makes it impossible to shop there. Nobody wants to wait for an employee to grab some toothpaste. You know, their business has been struggling. Walgreens stock is down like 80 plus percent over the last five years. So things are pretty bad over at Walgreens. But this rumor of Walgreens trying to sell itself to a private equity company has investors pretty excited.

Wallgreen shares popped 17% on Tuesday. The other big M&A news was Kroger lost their antitrust case for its $25 billion. buyout of grocery store giant Albertsons. This deal was successfully blocked by the FTC's Lena Khan on the grounds that the deal would hurt grocery store competition. Kroger was making the case that they need to buy Albertsons to compete with giants like Amazon and Walmart. If this deal had gone through, Kroger would have amassed more than 4,000 total grocery store locations across most of the U.S. Just for reference, Whole Foods has around 500 total locations. I'm not really sure how I feel about this because remember the government also blocked the JetBlue Spirit Airlines merger

and now Spirit Airlines filed for bankruptcy. Not sure if that's going to happen with either Kroger or Albertsons. And ultimately, as long as my grocery bill doesn't go up every month, I think I'm cool with it. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Gainstop are up this morning after the company reported their Q3 earnings last night. The numbers were kind of a mixed bag. Their revenues dropped 20% in the quarter, but they did report a surprising problem. of $17.4 million. Compared to that to a $3 million loss they reported in the same quarter of last year. So the surprising profit was enough to send the stock soaring.

In fact, the stock was up more than 10% in pre-market trading, but things have cooled off a bit. Shares are up only around 5% at the time of this recording. Wonder if Roaring Kitty's going to say anything about this today. Another stock making big moves today is Riggety Computing. Quantum computing seems to be all the rage right now, thanks to Google's big announcement earlier in the week. Well, Riggety Computing seems to be benefiting from that. Their shares jumped 45% on Tuesday, and they're adding to those gains today.

I've never heard of this company before, but they develop quantum integrated circuits used for quantum computers, which I feel like is going to be a pretty important right now. Oh, I might have spoke too soon. I just checked their stock price again, and now it's down 8%. But don't feel so bad for their investors. The stock is up nearly 300% over the past month after they announced their own quantum computing achievements and a new partnership with Nvidia earlier this month. Now, another stock having a bad morning is Macy.

shares of the retailer are falling after the company lowered its full year earnings outlook. The company expects same store sales to decline by 1%. And as a result, shares are down around 10% this morning. On the bright side, the company did finish their investigation into the accounting error from a couple weeks ago. Apparently, a single employee hit around $150 million in expenses for small package delivery. Macy's fired that employee and concluded the employee acted alone. And the company has gone back and updated all their financial statements after fixing

this error. So apparently it's not anything too shady to work. about. I think there are bigger problems right now is trying to get customers to buy their stuff. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Michael Saylor tried to convince Microsoft to buy Bitcoin. I know this sounds like a Madlib's headline, but this is legit. Yesterday, Michael Sailor presented a proposal at Microsoft's annual shareholder meeting to convince the company to use some of its $75 billion in cash to buy Bitcoin. Remember, Michael Saylor is the guy who runs micro strategy, which has been buying billions of dollars in Bitcoin over the last few years. And they're

stock price has gone up 600% this year. And Michael Saylor was making the case for Microsoft to use some of their money to buy Bitcoin because it would help their stock price as well. Well, despite the presentation from Michael Saylor, the Microsoft Board of Directors ultimately rejected this proposal. So Microsoft won't be buying any Bitcoin. I'm a little disappointed, but not that surprised. Like Microsoft doesn't need Bitcoin. Microsoft's business is massive and still growing, right? So I guess they don't really need to distract themselves with Bitcoin. But come on, man. They have like $75 billion in cash. Like use maybe a couple bills to buy some Bitcoin just for the memes.

That would have been so epic, but it's not happening. Don't be surprised if Michael Saylor tries to go to every major shareholder meeting to try to convince them to buy Bitcoin. And if just one major company decides to do it, it might open up the floodgates. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple and on Spotify.

voting today's Spotify poll. Drop us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does help us out, and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes, and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.

This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the 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. Run-down 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 respected professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Zayidamani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by open to the public investing incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.