The Rundown - Market Sell-Off Deepens, Nasdaq Approaches Bear Territory

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

Stock market update for April 4, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Friday, April 4th. In today's episode, we look at the market's reaction to Trump's tariffs and how other countries are retaliating. We also give you the latest on the TikTok ban and the Dark Horse Company trying to buy them at the 11th hour. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much the new Nintendo Switch

is going to cost. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, guys, the stock market had its worst day since 2020 yesterday. You know things are bad when you're putting up COVID comps. The S&P 500 tanked nearly 5%. The NASDAG dropped nearly 6%. Overall, the stock market shed $3.1 trillion in value on Thursday.

It was a total bloodbath as investors freaked out from all the tariffs announced by Trump this week. The S&P is now down more than 12% from its all-time highs that it's set back in February. The NASDAQ is down 17% from its all-time highs. And the sell-offs just continue to get worse today because countries are starting to retaliate with their own tariffs. China just announced a 34% tariff on all imports from the U.S. starting April 10th. And this might just be the beginning other countries might retaliate too. So it's very possible that we might be on the verge of a trade war. makes this whole situation even more unpredictable is we don't know what Trump's going to do next.

Does he double down and hit countries with even more tariffs? Does he back down? I mean, who knows? Trump did just post on truth social that his policies will not change. So yeah, the markets are just in full on panic mode right now. Wall Street is now expecting a recession this year. J.P. Morgan raised their chance of a recession to 60%. Now, we did get some good news. The March jobs report just dropped this morning, and it came in better than expected. The U.S. economy added 228,000 jobs in March, way more than the 140,000 jobs that was expected, but the unemployment rate did tick up slightly from 4.1% to 4.2%. So I guess there's no major weakness in the labor market just yet, but again, this report was from March, which doesn't take into account the full impact of tariffs.

So it's possible this might be the last good jobs report that we have in a while. Now next week is the start of earnings season. And while the Q1 numbers aren't going to reflect the impact of tariffs, the outlook from companies is going to be very important. We'll have to listen to some of these earnings calls to see how these executives are feeling about the future. So if you want to stay up to date on everything that's happening without having to doomscroll, then definitely get subscribed to the podcast and hit that notification bell on Spotify or Apple so you're notified as soon as a new episode goes up. We post new episodes six times a week. So we'll make sure you guys are in the loop. And, you know, we'll try to lighten the mood a little bit by throwing

in some jokes where we can, even though it's pretty hard to do that right now. Let's run through some headlines. The semiconductor industry might be on the verge of a big shake-up because Intel and TSM are in talks to form a joint venture. According to the information, Intel is looking to spin out their factories into a separate entity that would be 20% owned by the Taiwan-based chipmaker TSMC. TSMC is the biggest most advanced chip maker in the world. They make chips for Apple, Nvidia, AMD, pretty much everyone.

And what makes this deal very interesting is that TSM would share some of their manufacturing techniques with Intel, which is really weird if you think about it, because that's like Coca-Cola sharing their recipe with Pepsi. I mean, Intel seems to be way behind in tech and capabilities when it comes to making state-of-the-art chips that TSM can. So I was shocked to see that TSM would share their secret. with Intel. Now, one reason TSM might be doing this is because of Trump. The Trump administration is trying to increase domestic chip production in the U.S. to be less reliant on Taiwan. So the administration is brokering this deal. And if TSM plays ball, that might help them get a favorable trade agreement with the Trump administration. Also, if TSM starts sharing some of their

secrets with Intel, then Intel wouldn't be incentivized to innovate and just be fully reliant on TSM, removing them as a potential threat to TSM. So there might be some 4D chess happening here. But honestly, I don't blame Intel for this because they had to do something. The U.S. chipmaker has been struggling for years. In fact, last year, Intel lost over $18 billion and ended up firing their CEO. Their new CEO, Lit Bhutan, took over last month and it looks like he's ready to shake things up. But not everyone from Intel is thrilled about this because this could lead to further layoffs at the company. Investors did initially like this deal. though, Intel stock jumped nearly 10% yesterday after this news came out, but the stock has given

most of that back today. I think it's because this deal is still in the early stages, plus there's all the uncertainty around an economic slowdown and the tariffs and stuff. Speaking of uncertainty, we have to talk about TikTok because the app might get banned again this weekend. TikTok's deadline to divest and sell to a U.S. owner is this Saturday. Now, there's been a lot of potential buyers reported, including Oracle, the AI search engine perplexity put in an office. The Shark Tank host Kevin O'Leary put in an offer. I didn't know he had that kind of money. Mr. Bees put in an offer.

And then this week, Amazon made a last-minute bid to acquire all of TikTok. And it came through a letter addressed to Vice President J.D. Vance and the Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik. This was reporting from the New York Times. But again, these are all just rumors and reportings. There's been no official deal signed yet. So I wouldn't be surprised if TikTok gets banned again. Or I guess Trump could just delay the ban once again.

It's anyone's guess how this will play out. And not to mention the Chinese government also has to approve this sale. Not sure how they're going to feel about that after getting slat with a ton of tariffs this week. They might just be okay with the app getting banned in the U.S. rather than handing it over to a U.S. company. So a lot of things need to happen in the 11th hour. And it's very possible we wake up on Sunday morning and TikTok no longer works in the U.S. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.

Shares of MP materials are rising. after China announced export restrictions on rare earth metals. MP Materials runs the only mine in America producing rare earth metals, potentially putting the company in a position to be the alternative supplier to Chinese competitors. Rare earth metals are pretty important. They're used to make a lot of products, but most notably, EV batteries. So MP Materials could end up being a big beneficiary, and shares of the company ticker symbol MP are up more than 10% this morning on this news.

Actually, I take that back. It was up 10%. Now it's only up 2%. But honestly, that's not bad because there is not much green in the markets right now. Some of the big names continue to get crushed like Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, all down around 4% to 5%. And oil prices are taking a nosedive as well on concerns that tariffs will slow down demand. On top of the demand concerns, OPEC just announced yesterday that they would increase oil production. So demand potentially going down and supply going up, that's pushing oil prices lower.

They're down more than 7% today. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. And let's end the week on some good news. Nintendo is finally releasing the Switch 2. It's been eight years since the last one came out and we're finally going to have a new one. It's going to be powered by a custom Nvidia chip that will enable faster processing speeds, higher resolution graphics, and quicker game loading times. The new device will go on sale on June 5th and it's going to cost $450.

That's 50% more than what the original. Now despite the price bump, the Switch 2 is expected to sell 14.7 million consoles this year, which would outpace the debut of the first switch, according to the research firm Omdia. But I don't know, we'll have to see if anyone has any money left to buy video games after this market bloodbath. Well, all right guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. This might go down as one of the craziest weeks of the year. Now, the next few weeks should be very interesting with all the earnings coming out,

so we're going to stay on top of all of it. make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast. And if you guys enjoy our show, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or Spotify. All of that engagement really does help us out, and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much 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 a 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.

Respect to professionals. Learn more at public.com disclosures. In partnership with Zaidamani, brokerage services for U.S. listed, registered securities are offered by Open to the Public Investing Incorporated, member FINRA and SIPC.