The Rundown - Bitcoin and Ethereum Rally, Key Inflation Measure Comes in as Expected

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Stock market update for February 29, 2024. 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.

Welcome to the rundown, your daily market update in under five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, February 29th. In today's episode, we dive into the latest inflation report that just came out. Investors are liking it so far. We also recap Bitcoin's Wild Day on Wednesday and how the mania might be back. And then we end the show highlighting some stocks that are making moves today, like Duolingo and Snowflake. The one's doing great. The other one, not so much.

Oh, and then we also have a cool fun fact about Leap Day and the stock. market. That fun fact is not a good sign for the markets today. All right, let's get into it. Let's start with a quick recap of stocks on Wednesday. It was read across the board. The Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ all pulled back on Wednesday. In fact, Wednesday was the third straight day the Dow was down. But as I've said in previous episodes, the Dow was kind of lame, so I'm not really going to worry about that too much. You know, after last week's euphoric rally thanks to NVIDIA, things have kind of been, I don't know, like disappointing this week. We're even starting to see pullbacks in big tech stocks. And I think some investors are starting to wonder how much steam the AI-fuel

rally really has. I mean, have people kind of moved on to crypto now? Things move fast these days. We're going to talk more about crypto in a second. But first, we have to talk about inflation because we just got some fresh inflation data just now that you're going to want to know about. Investors have been waiting for this data all week, and we finally got it. So let's dive in. The personal consumption expenditure price index data just dropped. It's also known as the PCE index. and it's the Federal Reserve's preferred measurement of inflation. Most people pay attention to the CPI number. Well, the Fed prefers the PCE index.

The PCE increased by 2.4% for the year and up 0.3% for the month. That came right in line with estimates. Kind of a side of relief because the CPI number that came out a couple weeks ago at this point came in higher than estimates. But overall, inflation's still kind of hanging around the 3% range. Investors seem to like the news so far. I'm recording this around 9 a.m. Eastern right before the market opens. the stock futures are green across the board for the Dow, S&P, and NASDAQ.

But now we have to wait and see what Jerome Powell thinks about this at the next Fed meeting, which isn't until March 20th. So we got some time. Okay, so let's talk more crypto now. We covered Bitcoin in yesterday's episode, but I have to bring it up today. Because in yesterday's episode, I said that this Bitcoin rally felt different because there was just less mania around all of it. Well, guys, I think the mania might be back because Bitcoin had a wild day on Wednesday.

It started the day off by hitting $60,000 in the morning, and then it jumped all the way to $64,000 in a blink of an eye. And I think this is when the FOMO set in. Because right around noon, Eastern, Coinbase straight up crashed. According to them, they saw a surge in traffic. FOMO, baby. Now, this caused users to panic because when you open up the Coinbase app around lunchtime yesterday, people saw their balance at $0. Not going to lie, I had a mini panic attack myself when I saw that happen. But Coinbase said that it was just a glitch.

and they were just having a hard time handling the traffic. BlackRock reported yesterday that the Bitcoin ETF saw $520 million of inflow. That would be a one-day record for a Bitcoin ETF. $520 million in one day. Also, I had dinner with my parents yesterday, and my mom asked me about Bitcoin. So there's that data point. So in one day, we had Bitcoin's price jump like 15%. A major crypto app was crashing, and I had my parents ask me about Bitcoin.

Yeah, it sounds like the media might be back, guys. You know, I said on yesterday's episode that I would let you guys know, once I had my parents asking me about Bitcoin. So it happened. And so you guys have been warned. Hedge accordingly, okay? And as an FYI, if you want to buy Bitcoin, but you don't want to put all your crypto eggs in the Coinbase basket,

you can buy Bitcoin along with other cryptocurrencies on the public app as well. Just so you know. Now let's talk about some stocks that are making move. Starting with Duolingo. The stock is up more than 20% after they reported solid Q4 earnings. Dualingo is an app that people use to learn a new language. And honestly, it might be more than. known for like the sassy social media posts than their actual business. But the marketing strategy

seems to be working. Dualingo's daily active users jump 65% to 27 million users. That means that 27 million people are opening the Duolingo app every single day. Monthly active users jumped to 88 million. That's up 46%. The revenues were up 45% to 151 million. And last quarter they made a profit of $12.1 million. And this is the part that shocked me a little bit. Dualingo now has 6.6 million subscribers now. That's up 57% from a year ago. Look, I'm not going to lie to you guys. I had no idea this many people who were actually using Duolingo. Not only that, but paying to use Duolingo. I just thought that people were on there for like the unhinged content with their owl. Keep doing your thing, Duolingo, especially the marketing team. The company's worth almost $10 billion

now. That is incredible. On the flip side, let's talk about a stock not doing so hot today. Snowflake. Snowflake is a popular cloud computing company. And stock is down more than 20% after they reported their Q4 earnings. Honestly, their Q4 numbers were pretty decent. Revenues grew by 32%, which beat Wall Street estimates. But the stock dropped because Snowflakes' forecast for this quarter were lower than what Wall Street was estimating. Oh, and also their CEO, Frank Sleutman, announced a surprise retirement as well.

He's stepping down, and he's handing the keys over to someone who started at the company less than a year ago. So, yeah, that was kind of a shocker. And Frank Sleutman is only like 65 years old, so not a lot of people saw this coming. But, you know, he's also worth like $3.5 billion. So I guess he didn't really want to work anymore. I don't blame him. He's still going to stick around as the chairman of the board of directors for the company.

By the way, we could probably do an entire episode about Frank Slutman because this dude has a stacked resume. But yeah, investors not liking all this uncertainty. You know, lower revenue forecast for this upcoming quarter, new CEO, making investors kind of nervous. And the stock is down more than 20% as a result. And another stock not doing so great today, AMC, the movie theater company, former meme stock. The stock dropped more than 10%.

after they reported earnings. The revenues actually came in higher than Wall Street estimates, but they reported a bigger than expected loss of 83 cents a share. I just don't think that many people are going to the movie theaters anymore. People just wait for the movies

to come out on streaming. But hey, Dune 2 coming out this weekend, and a lot of people that I know are super excited about this movie. So maybe this is the bump that AMC needs. All right, guys, it's time to wrap up the show with everybody's favorite segment,

the fun fact of the day. Today is Leap Day. So I thought it would be interesting to look at what the stock market's performance has been historically on leap day, and it hasn't been so great. In the 13 leap dates that the stock market has been open, going back to 1952, the S&P was up only on four of those 13 days.

In fact, the S&P 500 falls about 0.3% on average on 13 of those leap days. Does this really matter? No, not at all. I mean, we're talking 13 data points here. By the way, I have a better idea. Every leap day should be a federal holiday. This should be a slam dunk for every politician. All right, guys.

That's all I got for you guys today. If you enjoyed today's show, consider giving us a five-star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And we live in the world of algorithms these days, and a little five-star tap really helps out the show. So we really appreciate it. Thank you guys so much for listening. And we'll be back here tomorrow.