The Rundown - Lululemon Founder Launches Board Fight, Silver Hits Meme Territory

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

Market update for Monday December 29, 2025Interview with Jason Ware, CIO of Albion Financial Space Stocks Deep DiveFollow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode:Lululemon’s founder launches proxy fight to shake up the boardNvidia finalizes a $5B investment in IntelDigitalBridge stock soars on SoftBank acquisitionSilver pulls back after a historic run fueled by speculation and industrial demandFun Fact: Bluey once again dominated streaming in 2025

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zad Admani, and today is Monday, December 29th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why Silver has turned into a meme stop. We'll also explain the corporate drama happening behind the scenes at Lulu Lemon. Then stick around to the end of the show to learn what the most watched TV show on streaming was this year. and it's not going to be a surprise to all the parents out there. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go. Stocks are coming off another winning week. The S&P 500 was up 1.4% last week, and the NASDAQ was up 1.2%. Both indices are sitting near record highs as we close out 2025. And speaking of record highs, let's talk about gold and silver because they're also sitting at record highs. In fact, on Friday, Silver entered meme stock territory for a little bit with prices hitting

nearly $80 for the first time. The price of silver has gone up 25% in the last month. That is pretty unusual for a metal. Now, things have started to cool off a bit today. Now, zooming out, though, the theme for the 2025 stock market has to be resilience. You know, markets got hit with so much uncertainty this year. There was tariffs. There was geopolitical flare-ups, random Trump-truth social posts.

But the markets kind of shrugged it all off. for another double digit year. The S&P has gone up nearly 18% in 2025. Well, the NASDAQ has gone up 22%. Now, if you want a more thorough recap of 2025 and a preview of 26, check out my interview that I did with Jason Ware. He's the chief investment officer at Albion Financial. He's a regular on CNBC. I really like his content. We chopped it up for 30 minutes. About 2025 and I'll look ahead to 2026. That interview was posted on Sunday. We'll put the link of the description to check that out. Also, I got one more plug. We posted a deep dive on Saturday about four space stocks that keep an eye on in

26. You know, the space sector has gotten a lot of hype right now, especially with the SpaceX IPO rumored for 2026. So we took a look at other space stocks to follow next year. So if you're looking for some bonus rundown content this week, definitely go check those two episodes out if you haven't already. And if you enjoy the podcast, consider subscribing and dropping a comment. We've got a lot of content ahead for 2026.

All right, that's enough plugs for today. Let's get into the rest of the show. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with some drama at Lulu Lemon. Lulu Lemmon's founder Chip Wilson is launching a proxy fight in an attempt to shake up the existing board. Chip Wilson nominated three director candidates to the board, including former co-CEO of On Running, who just stepped down back in June. He also nominated a former ESPN chief marketing officer who created ESPNW and a former CEO of

Activision who oversaw call of duty. Chip Wilson wants these three people on the Lulu Lemon board, and he has a lot of influence because he owns nearly 9% of Lulu Lemon, making him the company's second largest shareholder behind only Vanguard. And the timing here is interesting because just last week, activist investor Elliott Management revealed they took a $1 billion stake in Lulu Lemon, and they're pushing for former Ralph Lauren executive Jane Nielsen to become the next CEO. But Chip Wilson wants new board members in place before a new CEO is picked because he believes shareholders won't trust any CEO picked by the current board. You know, Lulu Lemon's current CEO, Calvin McDonald, is stepping down in January after facing intense pressure for the company's recent underperformance. Lilloman stock is down roughly 44% this year as the company struggles with sales slumps in the core U.S. market.

Domestic sales fell by 2% last quarter. Chip Wilson blames Calvin McDonald for killing innovation at Lillom and making, the brand lose its edge. So there's a lot of drama happening at Lulu right now. We'll see if the shareholders end up siding with the company's founder or the existing board. I'm sure we'll have more updates about this over the next few weeks. Let's shift gears and talk about the semiconductor space, because I feel like we don't talk about that enough. Invita has officially completed its $5 billion investment in Intel, which was a deal that was first announced back in September. According to a filing this morning, Nvidia bought 214 million shares at $23.28 per share. And this caps off a pretty

big and important year Intel. This year, Intel got a new CEO. They also got investments from the U.S. government and also Nvidia. That's a pretty strong vote of confidence and it's one reason why the stock has gone up nearly 80% this year. But we'll have to see what Intel does with all this cash and support. You know, they're trying to turn things around and bring back advanced chip manufacturing here in the U.S. Intel still needs to prove that they can actually deliver on advanced manufacturing and compete with the industry leader like TSM. Things aren't going so great so far. There was a recent report from Reuters that Invidia tested Intel's 18A manufacturing process, but did not commit to keep using it. So for Intel stock to keep outperforming, they're going to

show that they can actually execute when it comes to manufacturing. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Digital Bridge are ripping higher this morning after SoftBank announced that they were acquiring the investment firm for $16 a share, valuing the deal at $4 billion. Digital Bridge is an investment firm focused on digital infrastructure, so things like cell phone towers, fiber networks, edge computing, and most importantly, data centers.

Digital Bridge manages about $108 billion in assets as of the end of September. Now, this deal makes sense for SoftBank. You know, they're an investment firm out of Japan, led by Masa Sun. And they've been going heavy on AI lately. They've been the lead investor in OpenAI and other AI companies. So by acquiring Digital Bridge, now they're getting exposure to AI data centers. And as a result, shares of Digital Bridge are up more than 10% this morning in pre-market trading, trading around $15.25 a share. Now, what's crazy is that the stock actually jumped nearly 50% at one point in pre-market trading after the initial acquisition rumors were first reported on

Bloomberg. But once the final deal number, was announced, the stock settled at around $15. Now, on the flip side, gold and silver are experiencing a pullback today after a big run-up last week. Silver especially is being pretty volatile. I mentioned earlier in the show that silver hit $80 an ounce for the first time on Friday before dramatically reversing. And today, it's sitting at around $74 an ounce. So that's like a 7% pullback in silver. Gold is also down around 2% as well. You know, silver is getting a lot of attention lately because there's a supply crunch right now. Also, China is planning to restrict the export of silver starting on January 1st, which should make the supply issue even worse.

So that's gotten the attention of retail investors. On top of that, Elon Musk even waited on the silver stuff over the weekend, saying that the export ban from China is not good because silver is needed in many industrial processes. So all that is leading to a wild swing in silver prices. I mean, it's kind of crazy to see a boring metal like this swing up and down like five and six percent a day. Silver has now become the latest meme stock. But unlike the stock price of a dying retailer, the price of silver has, the price of

has a meaningful impact on the overall economy. So definitely something to keep an eye on moving forward. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. The most watched show this year on streaming was Bluey. Again, Bluey was also the most watched show in 2024. You know, anyone with kids knows about Bluey. It's an Australian animated TV show. Honestly, it's absolutely incredible. Both my kids love it and I kind of I love watching it with them as well. It's got incredible animation and writing. I've teared up a few times watching some of their episodes, so love Bluey. And one reason that these kids' shows end up being the most watched every year is because

kids like watching the same thing over and over and over again. And that probably explains why K-pop Demon Hunters was the most watched movie on streaming this year, and it wasn't even close. The minutes spent watching K-pop Demon Hunters this year was almost three times as much as the second most watched movie this year, which was Happy Gilmore, too. And honestly, that movie was not great, all right? I'm kind of surprised that Netflix and other streaming services don't just triple down on making good kids content. Because if you have good kids content, I think parents will subscribe to your service.

Honestly, it's 80% of the reason why I have Disney Plus. It's for my kids. I wouldn't be surprised if Netflix leans into more kids content going forward. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode if you did. And you have like five extra seconds. Consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you live. listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify

poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does help us out. And it helps other people find the show. Now, as a reminder, we have another short week coming up. The stock market will be closed on Thursday for New Year. So no show from us. But we're going to be here the rest of the week. So don't worry, you're going to get your market fixed. Hopefully there's some interesting things to talk about. Otherwise, we'll have to get creative with it. Thank you guys again for listening, watching, and commenting, shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.