The Rundown - Bitcoin Hits $100K, American Eagle Slumps on Weak Holiday Outlook

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Stock market update for December 5, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, December 5th. In today's episode, we tell you about the two events that push Bitcoin past $100,000, one of them being Jerome Powell. We also tell you the latest on the murder of United Healthcare CEO. Then stick around to the end of the show for an earnings recap on five below an American Eagle and some fun facts about this podcast from Spotting All right, let's go. The market rally continued on Wednesday. This time all three major indices joined in on the fun, all three closing at record highs.

The S&P was up 0.6%. The NASDAQ jumped 1.3%. And yesterday was a notable day for the Dow as well. The Dow added 0.7% and closed above 45,000 for the first time ever. So yeah, Dow having a pretty nice year, but still don't care. All right, let's talk about what everyone does see. to care about right now, Bitcoin, because guys, it finally happened. Bitcoin crossed $100,000 for the first time ever.

Now, this happened around 9 p.m. last night, and I might get cloned for this, but I was actually asleep when it happened, so I missed it in real time. But then my one-year-old woke up around 2 a.m., shout out to babies for not sleeping through the night, and I saw it on my phone, and I'm not going to lie, I haven't been able to sleep since. You know, I think there was a couple things that happened yesterday that really pushed Bitcoin over the top. For one, President-elect Trump is nominating Paul Atkins to run the SEC.

And Paul Atkins is pro-crypto. So I'm sure that helps. The other big news was that Fed chairman Jerome Powell named Rob Bitcoin yesterday as well. Jay Powell was being interviewed at the New York Times Deal Book Summit. And he compared Bitcoin to digital gold. Like, he actually said that. People use Bitcoin as a speculative asset, right? It's like gold.

It's just like gold only. It's virtual. It's digital. people are not using it as a form of payment or as a store of value. It's highly volatile. It's not a competitor for the dollar. It's really a competitor for gold. Now, I'm sure this isn't the first time that Jerome Powell has mentioned Bitcoin,

but I think this might be the first time that he's called it digital gold. And that comment coming from a sitting Federal Reserve chairman was enough to spark a rally yesterday, and Bitcoin is now sitting at around $103,000. And I'm also seeing that Donald Trump just posted on truth social this morning, congratulating Bitcoin investors on the $100,000 milestone. So yeah, crazy day. I don't even know where to go from here. I mean, the 100,000 milestone was a big one.

And I guess the watch for 250K is now on. Let's run through some headlines. We have a sad story to start off with. The CEO of United Health Care Brian Thompson was fatally shot in New York City yesterday as he was heading into a Midtown Hotel for a United Health Care, Investor Conference. Authorities are calling this a targeted attack and the suspect has yet to be arrested. There's currently a $10,000 reward for any information. There's some security footage of this shooting and, I mean, it looked like it was straight out of a movie, you know, something out

of Jason Bourne or John Wick. The fact that this happened in Midtown Manhattan, one of the busiest areas in the city is just crazy. The executive's wife told NBC that there had been some threats against her husband. Now, police still don't know the motive for this murder. There's currently a manhunt for the shooter. There were some shell casings, though, found at the scene of the shooting with the words deny, defend, and depose written on them. So yeah, pretty crazy stuff, but we'll let you guys know if any new information comes out of this. As for United Health Care of the Company, I mean, it's the largest medical insurance provider in America. It's one of the largest companies in the world with a market cap of over $500 billion. Let's shift gears and talk about

GM. It looks like the company is struggling in China and burning through money. Their business in China is expected to deal a $5 billion blow to its profit as they restructure operations over in China. GM has a joint venture in China since 1997 with the state-owned company SAIC Motor. And the business used to be profitable until recently. Like with many other foreign operated carmakers in China, GM has rapidly lost market share to Chinese automakers like BYD that have capitalized on the transition to electric and hybrid vehicles. Just to pay some numbers here, GM sales dropped 20% in the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period a year ago. But again, GM isn't alone.

Ford has spent nearly $900 million this year restructuring their business in China, and Tesla is also trying to fend off B.D from passing it as the largest EV producer in the world. So these Chinese automakers are making big moves that's hurting American and other foreign automakers. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of five below are jumping after the discount chain raised its full year guidance just in time for the holiday shopping season after seeing good performance during Black Friday. I had no idea that Five Below did Black Friday sales, but good to know. I mean, five below has been struggling all year, but shares jump more than 14% today on this news.

On the flip side, shares of American Eagle are down after they cut their sales outlook for the rest of the year because they're expecting an underwhelming holiday shopping season. The retailer is now expecting 2024 same store sales growth to be just 3% rather than the initial forecast of 4%. Also, revenues in their previous quarter just missed estimates as well, which marks the third straight quarterly miss. That's making investors nervous and shares of American Eagle are down more than 12% this morning. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. It is finally Spotify rap season, and if your Instagram feed looks anything like mine, you're seeing these Spotify rap results everywhere. It looks like Taylor Swift dominated once again.

She was the top global artist for the second year in a row. And the most streamed album this year on Spotify was Taylor Swift's new album, the Tortured Poets Department. Taylor Swift was actually number two on my top artist. Ed Sharon was number one. And then Kendrick Lamar was number three. But my Spotify rap results are a bit messed up because my kids have hijacked my Spotify at this point. One of my most listened to songs this year was Baby Shark.

Just tells you everything you need to know. Now, we also got some cool stats about the podcast this year. Spotify tells us that the rundown was a top five business podcast this year and it charted for 35 weeks. That is amazing. And it was a top 10 podcast for 41,000 people. So shout out to everyone that tunes into the rundown every day. That's amazing. And a double super special shout out to the 7,000 of you that have the rundown as their number one podcast this year. I mean, that just blows my mind, you know. We've only been doing this show for a short amount of time, about a year now, and seeing the growth and the feedback from the listeners has been incredible.

You know, it's pretty nice knowing that it's not just my wife and my mom listening to the show. So thank you again for everyone that listens to the show that supports the show. And we're going to keep things rolling moving forward. So we've got some cool stuff coming up. Another interesting tidbit, the most popular music genre for our listeners was rap. And I think this checks out because my number one most stream song this year was not like us by Kendrick Lammon. and Mike, who does a lot of work behind the scenes for this show, his top artist was Future.

Actually, leave us a comment on Spotify and tell us who your top artist was. I bet we get a lot of Kendrick Lamar. I bet we get a lot of Drake, some future, maybe some Sabrina Carpenter. I'm really curious to know. So yeah, let us know in the comments. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. It's been a pretty big week so far. A lot of stuff has happened.

Some good, some not so good. I can't believe I thought it was going to be a slow week. And we still got one more day left. Tomorrow should be a big day because tomorrow morning we are getting the jobs report for November. So we'll get a feel for how the labor market is doing. We're going to recap that report in tomorrow's show. So make sure you guys tune in for that. And if you guys enjoyed today's show and have like 12 extra seconds, consider leaving us a comment on Spotify.

Vote in today's Spotify poll. All that engagement really does help us out and it helps other people find the show. And who knows? Maybe we'll be in more Spotify wraps next year. Thank you guys again for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back. back here tomorrow.