The Rundown - Google Makes Quantum Computing Breakthrough, OpenAI Releases Sora

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Stock market update for December 10, 2024.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadmani, and today is Tuesday, December 10th. In today's episode, we tell you about the big breakthrough at Google that has the tech crowd and Wall Street very excited. We also tell you about the new tool from OpenAI and why I'm not a big fan. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why Alaskan airline stock is up, why Oracle is down, and why Taylor Swift is kind of like Invidia.

All right, let's go. Well, the stock market rally took a break on Monday. Both the S&P and NASDAQ were down 0.6% to start the week. One of the biggest losers yesterday was Palantir, which closed the day down 5% on Monday. Now, the reason this is notable is because it was a huge reversal from the way the day started. We talked about Palantir on yesterday's show because it was up more than 5% when the market's opened, but I guess it couldn't keep the rally going. A ton of investors took profit and the stock dropped.

Or it's possible that I just jinxed it. Sorry. Overall, though, there wasn't any major news or catalyst to cause stocks to drop yesterday. I think investors might just be taking some profits and waiting for the CPI inflation reports to drop on Wednesday morning before making any major moves. Right now, expectations for the CPI is to be around 2.7%. But we'll know the official numbers tomorrow morning. So if you guys aren't already, make sure you guys subscribe to the pod and tune in tomorrow morning.

I was trying to think of an inflation joke, but honestly, it really wasn't that interesting. Oh, that was so bad. Let's run through some headlines. Move over AI because there's a new tech hype building in Silicon Valley, and it's called Quantum Computing. Google shocked a lot of people yesterday when they announced that they achieved a quantum computing breakthrough. The company says their quantum computers powered by a chip called Willow took just five minutes to perform a computation that would have taken one of today's fastest supercomputers

more than 10 septillion years to complete. That's not a made-out word, by the way. Septillion is an actual number. It's one followed by 24 zeros. That number is so large that it's longer than the years of the universe has been around. Google emphasized another major achievement

saying that its machines surpass the error correction threshold, which is something that people have been trying to figure out for 30 years now. Now, I'll keep in real with you guys. I have no idea what quantum computing is. All right. So I have a lot of YouTube research

and deep dives to do. to fully understand what's going on here. But this seems to be a big deal based on the hype that I'm seeing. It could lead to quantum computing being useful in real-world use cases. Right now, these machines are just experimental. But the long-term vision is that this tech could be applied to things like drug discovery or cures for diseases or optimizing traffic flow or making supply chains even better so we get our Amazon orders in like two hours instead of two days.

It's still all really new and it's very exciting stuff. So keep an eye out for more news about. quantum computing because I feel like this is just the beginning. Investors were surely loving this. Google stock is up more than 5% this morning in reaction to this news. Let's shift gears and talk about AI. It might be old news soon, but Open AI got some hype going again yesterday because they finally release their video generation platform SORA. Open AI first showed off SORA like nine months ago. Well, we finally get to use it now. This tool allows people to generate video using just a text prompt or you can even turn photos into videos. Now SORA is only available to check.

Chat GPT plus subscribers, which costs $20 a month. And it limits the number of videos that you can generate, and those videos can only be five seconds long. Now, OpenAI is offering Sora Turbo, which is an enhanced version of the tool. It's available to only chat GPT pro subscribers. That costs $200 bucks a month. But that lets you generate an unlimited amount of videos

that can be up to 20 seconds long. Personally, I'm not a big fan of AI generated art or video, and I really just hope this doesn't mean that we're going to have TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube just filled with AI Slops. You know, that's my biggest fear. By the way, chat GPT has around 300 million weekly active users. So I wonder if this tool is going to help increase that number or not.

Actually, let's make that the poll on Spotify today. Let us know if you plan to pay for chat GPT to try out SORA. I currently pay for the chat GPT plus subscription, which is $20 a month. So I'll try messing around with SORA this week. But I don't think I could ever justify upgrading to the chat GPT pro subscription and paying $200 a month. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Alaska Air, which owns both Alaskan Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, are flying high this morning after the company announced plans to expand internationally. The company plans to turn Seattle, which is the company's headquarters, into an international hub with flights to Asia in 2025 and eventually adding flights to Europe.

The airline thinks that most of their future growth will come from these international routes. Now, as a reminder, Alaska Airlines bought Hawaiian Airlines earlier this year for $1.9 billion. And the company expects that merger to deliver about a billion dollars in profit by 2027. So it looks to be a successful merger. Investors are definitely loving it. The stock has had a good year up more than 40% this year and shares are up another 10% this morning in pre-market trading. Crazy to think that Alaska airline started the year off having their doors blown off mid-flight and their stocks still ended up going up more than 40% this year. And look, I know the doors being blown off isn't their fault. That was fully Boeing. I should be careful what I say here. Now, another stock that's been a

having a great year, but it's down this morning is Oracle. Their shares are down after the company reported earnings and missed revenue and profit estimates for the quarter. The company also issued weaker than expected forecast for their upcoming quarter. So as a result, stock is down 7% in pre-market trading. But despite falling short this quarter, I think that Oracle investors are going to be okay because Oracle's stock is having its best year since 1999. Their shares are up 80% this year as of market closed yesterday. And a big reason for that is their cloud services business, which now accounts for 77% of its total revenue. I think most people don't realize, but Oracle is now a full-on cloud company, and they compete with Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. In fact, Oracle's cloud infrastructure

business is up 52% from a year ago. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Taylor Swift's Ares Tour wrapped up last night in Vancouver, and the total numbers from this tour are insane. The tour did more than $2 billion in ticket sales. That's a record, and it might be an unbreakable one, because it's more than double the second highest tour, which was Coldplay. This tour went on for 21 months. It started back in March of 2023. There were a total of 149 shows in 51 cities across 21 countries, with each show averaging around three hours and 15 minutes, which to me might be the most impressive part of all of this. Performing for three hours is insane. I guess that's how you do a record breaking $2 billion in ticket sales for your concerts.

How does she not lose her voice? Like I do six short podcasts a week, and by Sunday, I'm on the verge of losing my voice, and it sounds super hoarse. So shout out Taylor Swift. By the way, that $2 billion doesn't even account for all the merch this tour sold, or the money she made from her movie about the tour, or the book about the tour, or all the tickets sold in the secondary market. I can't imagine what the actual total economic impact of this tour is.

Taylor Swift kind of reminds me of Nvidia, you know, because they've both been on an epic 21-month run. They both kind of have cult-like followings. They're both economic juggernauts. They both continue to exceed expectations. And they both have the same question. Can they keep it going? And I guess in both cases, we'll find out.

Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Remember, tomorrow we're talking inflation. The CPI report comes out. We'll recap that report and tell you how the markets are reacting. Should be a good one. And we might be talking a little game. top too because they report earnings today after the market closed. So we'll discuss any major

movements in their stock price as well. By the way, if you guys enjoyed today's episode and if you have like 12 extra seconds, consider giving us a five star rating on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. Leave 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. 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 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.

Rundown 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.