The Rundown - GameStop Considers Investing in Bitcoin, Nvidia Reveals New AI Stock Investment

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Stock market update for February 14, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Friday, February 14th. In today's episode, we tell you why markets are getting close to all-time highs and totally ignoring the tear of threats by the president. We also talk about GameStop's plans to buy Bitcoin. I wonder what took him so long. We also tell you about this relatively unknown company that Nvidia just invested in,

and their shares are flying. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out about how much money we're all going to spend on Valentine's Day this year. Number keeps going up. All right. Let's go. Well, stocks were booming on Thursday. The S&P 500 jumped 1% to near all-time highs.

The NASDAQ was at 1.5% closing in at record highs. I mean, investors were feeling good. And yesterday started off kind of dicey. Trump posted on Truth Social at 6 a.m. that he was going to impose reciprocal tariffs, which had the markets on edge a bit. But that turned out to be a presidential head fake. During a press conference yesterday, Trump didn't announce any new tariffs.

He just asked his Commerce Secretary to look into imposing reciprocal tariffs country by country and give him a report by early April. So maybe we'll get more tariffs in April depending on what the report says. But at this point, I think investors are just going to ignore all tariffs-related drama until it becomes real. Now, speaking of reels, we have to talk about meta. The company's stock has now gone up for 19 days in a row. In fact, the stock hasn't had a redact. day since the inauguration, which seems like a lifetime ago, given everything that's happened since.

And I think that might be the most impressive part about this wind streak. The fact that the markets have been on a wild swing since Trump took office, that meta just ignored all that and just continued to move higher every day. And if they finish in the green today, they'll enter this long weekend with 20 straight green candles in a row. I mean, I know it's Valentine's Day, but I don't want to see any red today, all right? Just give me green. Now, as a reminder, Monday is President's Day.

The stock market will be closed, so no show for us. But we'll be back here on Tuesday talking shop. And I do want to take a second to thank everyone that's listened to the show that engages with the show, everyone that's given us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. I mean, all of that engagement really helps us out. And you guys listening and engaging with the show every day allows us to make the show better and do things like a weekend deep dive episode and do video podcasts. So I just want to thank you guys for that and all the support over the last year.

You know, we're just getting started. We have some big plans for the podcast and it wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for you guys tuning in every day. Sorry, I didn't think I was going to get all sappy near the end, but hey, it is Valentine's Day, and this bull market's making me feel some kind of way, you know? Let's run through some headlines. And we're talking about GameStop today. The gaming retailer slash meme stock is considering investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, according to reporting from CNBC. I mean, this might be the least surprising headline of all time, especially since GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen posted a picture with Michael Saylor on

X last week. Remember Michael Saylor is the founder of Micro Strategy, a big time Bitcoin maxi. He's bought billions of dollars of Bitcoin. And honestly, I'm kind of surprised it took GameStop this long to do something like this. Because, you know, the company has lost some of its meme stock shine like it had back in 2021. And what better way to capture the meme attention than buy Bitcoin and other crypto, you know? Because let's be honest, their underlying brick and mortar gaming retail business, not doing so hot right now. Revenues have dropped for five consecutive quarters as gamers are buying more games digitally. Not many people are going to GameStop to buy games anymore.

But, you know, despite the business's struggles, the company does have over $4 billion in cash, according to their last earnings report, that they can use to buy Bitcoin. So investors were excited to hear this. GameStop stock is up 7% this morning. And what was shocking to me was that GameStop stock has gone up over 80% over the last 12 months.

Again, this is despite their business slowing. So maybe they still have a little meme stock magic left in them. I wonder how Roaring Kitty feels. about all of this. Let's shift gears and talk about Airbnb. Now personally, I've never been an Airbnb guy, but that doesn't seem to be the case for everybody else. The home rental company reported earnings last night, and they beat on earnings and revenue estimates for the quarter. Airbnb recorded a 12% bump in night and experiences booked year over year, and the company pulled in gross bookings of $17.6 billion, which surpass estimates for the quarter.

The company has been launching new products to expand beyond just home rentals. That includes its co-hosting network, which is a brokerage service that connects Airbnb hosts with property management companies, these co-hosted properties earn double the amount that traditional rentals make according to Airbnb. And the company still has plans to innovate with plans to invest $200 to $250 million into new ventures this year. Not really sure what that could be. I mean, my idea to them would be to provide every Airbnb host with like a Roomba that just cleans the unit by itself. And then that way, we don't have to pay cleaning fees anymore. That might help more people use Airbnb's. Free idea out there for CEO,

Ryan Chesky to use. You don't even have to credit me. I mean, overall, Airbnb's business is doing pretty great and shares are up more than 14% this morning in reaction to these earnings. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Roku are streaming higher, thanks in large part of the success of political advertising. Thanks to those political ads, their advertising revenue grew by 25% pushing it above the $1 billion mark for the first time ever. You know, Roku is a very interesting company because it serves as an access point to connected TVs for consumers to watch content, and it also has its own streaming service, the Roku streaming channel. Essentially, they're an operating system and a gateway for streaming,

and currently they're in over 90 million households as of 2024. So investors seem to be pretty bullish on the business and the stock is up more than 14% this morning in reaction to these earnings. Now, that's pretty great, but that's nothing compared to what this Chinese self-driving startup Wii ride is doing. Their shares are up 135% this morning after Nvidia disclosed that it bought 1.7 million shares of the company in Q4. Weiride is a relatively unknown company, but NVIDIA is an early investor and a key supplier of its chips. WeRide was found it seven years ago, and they went public in the U.S. late last year. But, you know, Nvidia's latest investment moves are also tanking a couple stocks. Invita exited its position in both Serve Robotics and Soundhound

in Q4. And as a result, Serb's stock is down 40% this morning, and Soundhound is down nearly 30%. Jensen Huang, man, he might have more influence than Jerome Powell. Another stock having a bad day is Coinbase, their shares are falling despite the crypto trading company crushing earning. Their transaction revenue was up more than double and trading revenue grew by 185% year over year. So people are trading a lot of crypto in Q4. The company attributed Bitcoin ETFs and the election of pro-crypto President Donald Trump for the enthusiasm boost in crypto. Now while trading revenue is crushing it, Coinbase plans to diversify its business away from its reliance on crypto trades. The company has revenue share in the Stablecoin USDC,

and they plan to increase their sales and marketing spend in Q4 for stablecoins. Coinbase wants to make USDC the number one stable coin in the world, as it builds on expectations for a pro-stable coin bill to pass in Congress this year. So we'll see if that actually happens, but right now, shares of Coinbase are down around 5% this morning in reaction to these earnings. Let's wrap the show with the fun. Today is Valentine's Day. It's a stressful day for some people, but it's a great day for anyone selling overpriced flowers and chocolates. Because according to the National Retail Federation,

people are expected to spend a record $27.5 billion for Valentine's Day this year. The number one category is jewelry, followed by dining out and flowers. And, you know, Valentine's Day just continues to get pricier. The cost of flowers have gone up compared to last year, and the cost of chocolate has gone way up. But, you know, that being said, I do need to run to the shop to get some flowers and some chocolates for my wife. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. What a wild week.

We had a hot inflation report. We had earnings. We had tariffs on steel. And given all that, we still have stocks hovering near all-time highs. Not a bad way to go into the weekend. Thank you guys again for all the support. I'm not going to do the whole sappy spiel again. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes.

And we'll see you guys next week. This is the rundown. Your real-time resource for news events. friends 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 subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult. Respected professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with

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