The Rundown - Eli Lilly's Weight-Loss Pill Trials Hit Big Milestone, Temu's App Downloads Plummet in Wake of Tariff War

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

Stock market update for April 17, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Thursday, April 17th. In today's episode, we tell you what Jerome Powell said yesterday that tanked the markets and caught the attention of President Trump. We also tell you why investors are hyped about Eli Lilly's latest weight loss pill and why Timo's app is dropping in the App Store rankings. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out which luxury. brand, overtook LVMH, and why it might be recession proof.

We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, guys, stocks got cooked on Wednesday, thanks to a double whammy of trade wars and comments from Jerome Powell. The S&P 500 was down 2.2% yesterday. The NASDAQ dropped more than 3%. Yesterday started off on a down note with the news that the Trump administration is restricting Nvidia and AMD from exporting their AI chips to China.

We talked more about these export restrictions on yesterday's episode, so go check that out if you missed it. These export restrictions are expected to cost Nvidia and AMD billions of dollars in lost sales, and that's why both of their stocks were down around 7% yesterday, dragging the rest of the market down with it. One of the few things that might be more influential than Nvidia are comments from Fed Chair Jerome Powell. And he had some words yesterday that caught the market's attention.

During a conference in Chicago, the Fed chair hinted that Trump's tariffs could make it challenging for the Fed to control inflation and boost growth. The level of tariff increases announced so far is significantly larger than anticipated, and the same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth. Tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation. The inflationary effects could also be more persistent. So his words triggered an even deeper sell-off yesterday, sending my net worth even lower.

Now, these comments from Jerome Powell yesterday seems to have caught the attention of the president. This morning, Donald Trump posted on truth social that Jerome Powell is always too late and wrong. He wrote that in all caps. And he also said that Jerome Powell should have cut rates long ago. But here's the big kicker. Trump signed off his post by saying that Powell's, termination cannot come fast enough. Those are some spicy words there. Not sure if the president is threatening to fire Jerome Powell. Jerome Powell's term as Fed chair ends in May of 2026. So he still has

the job for another year. So now I just can't wait for the next Fed meeting. It's on May 7th, so we still have to wait a few more weeks until we find out what Jerome Powell has to say about all this and what the Fed decides to do with interest rates. According to the CME Fed Watch tool, traders are only giving it a 13% chance that the Fed cuts interest rates at the next meeting. So we'll see what ends up happening. By the way, I forgot to mention earlier this week that today is the last trading day of the week since the stock market will be closed tomorrow for Good Friday. So no show from us tomorrow, but we're still going to have a weekend deep dive episode posted

this weekend. So keep an eye on your podcast feed for that. I recommend watching that one on YouTube or Spotify because it's going to be a video episode. All right, let's talk about Eli Lilly. The pharma giant had a big announcement this morning regarding progress on their weight loss pill that has Wall Street hype this morning. Their weight loss pill is called Orphorgliprin. I hope I'm saying that right.

And it's currently in late stage trials. And according to the latest results, patients with type 2 diabetes taking this pill lost about 16 pounds or almost 8% of their body weight over 40 weeks. And they also saw a drop in their blood sugar. These results are in line with some of the popular weight loss in general. drugs like OZemping. And what makes this pill even more promising is that the patients in this trial still hadn't plateaued so they could keep losing even more weight. So you can see why investors are super excited about this. Eli Lilly's stock shot up more than 10% this morning once

this news came out. According to Bloomberg, the weight loss drug market is expected to hit $130 billion by the end of the decade. So that's why many pharmaceutical companies are rushing to get their weight loss pill to market. Eli Lilly definitely seems to be the lead at this point. Other pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Nova Nordisk have reported setbacks and disappointing results. So Eli Lilly is definitely a name to keep an eye out for. That's ticker symbol LLY. Now speaking of companies having setbacks right now, we have to talk about Timo because their app store ranking is falling as downloads begin to drop off in the wake of this trade war with China. Timu's parent company, PDD Holdings, is based in China.

and they've seen a 62% drop-off in downloads recently, according to data analytics firm's similar web. Timo was the most downloaded app in the Apple App Store in 2023 and 2024, but right now, their ranking has dropped all the way down to 71. So that's a pretty significant drop-off. I mean, look, it's fair to say that T-Mu's entire business model has come under threat because of Trump's tariffs on Chinese imports. They sell extremely cheap stuff from China to the U.S.

And that's going to be really hard to do when there's a 145% tariff on Chinese goods coming into the U.S. On top of that, a key loophole called Diminimus is being closed on May 2nd. This rule allowed goods with a value lower than $800 to be imported into the U.S. without having to pay import fees like tariffs. I mean, most of the stuff that Timo was selling was less than $800, so they never had to pay any sort of tariffs. With that loophole being closed, I mean, Timo might be cooked here. Most of the stuff coming in from Timu is going to get hit with a 145% tariff,

which is going to make it really hard for the company to compete on price. In fact, the company recently came out with a statement that the e-commerce site will be raising prices starting on April 15th. So I think Timu is seeing the writing on the wall here when it comes to the U.S. And they've reportedly cut back on U.S. advertising as well, according to CNBC. And that's going to be something to watch out for because Timu was a big advertiser on platforms like Meta. That could have an impact on meta's earnings. We'll find out in a couple weeks because Mena is reporting earnings on April 30th. But yeah, if you were waiting to place any orders on Timu, you might want to get them in

ASAP because in just a few days, their prices are going to go way up. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Herd stock is gassed up this morning after news that Bill Ackman's Pershing Square hedge fund took a massive stake in the rental car company. According to the SEC filings, Pershing has acquired nearly 20% of the company making Bill Ackman the second largest shareholder. That news sent the stock up 50% yesterday, and it's up another 15% this morning.

Now, I'm not really sure why Bill Ackman is even buying a struggling rental car company that is constantly on the brink of bankruptcy. Maybe he thinks the company will turn things around soon, or maybe he thinks that car prices will go up because of auto tariffs, and that'll help out a rental car company like Hertz. Or maybe it's possible that Bill Ackman might be washed up a bit and past his prime, because he's made some pretty notable mistakes recently. Like, he sold his entire $1 billion stake in Netflix back in April of 2022.

And since then, the stock quadrupled. On top of that, Bill Ackman invested big in Nike late last year. And since then, Nike's stock has dropped nearly 30% this year so far. So I'm kind of surprised it hurts stock jumped so much on the Ackman news. Now, let's talk about United Health Group. Their stock is taking a huge hit this morning after the insurance giant missed earnings for the quarter and lowered their full year guidance. United Health blamed the poor performance

on the increase of Medicare costs. I guess more people are using Medicare to their advantage. Now remember, United Health Group was the company whose CEO of their healthcare unit, Brian Thompson, was assassinated in New York late last year. Currently, his accused assailant Luigi Mangione is in court trying to avoid the death penalty. But yeah, coming back to United Health Care,

their business is not doing so great right now, and their shares are down nearly 20% this morning in reaction to these earnings. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. LVMH is no longer the most valuable luxury company in the world. That title now belongs to Hermes, the maker of the $40,000 Birkenbag. LVMH is at a pretty big fall off as of late. Back in 2021, they became Europe's most valuable company,

and they maintained that title all the way to 2024. But these days, their stock has taken a big hit down more than 15% this year. and it's lost more than 40% of its value since their stock peaked back in 2023. Hermes, on the other hand, they're doing pretty good right now. Their stock has jumped 10% this year. The thing with Hermes is their clientele is so rich that it's almost like recession proof. You know, billionaires are probably still going to buy a Birkenbag even though there's an economic slowdown. That being said, I hear that Birkenbags do make for a good investment.

At least that's what my wife keeps telling me. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Remember, no show tomorrow. The stock market is closed for Good Friday. We'll be back here with these daily market recaps on Monday morning. We are going to have a weekend deep dive episode. So keep an eye on your podcast feed for that.

It's going to be a video podcast so you can watch it on YouTube or Spotify. 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 here this weekend for the deep dive. 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.