The Rundown - Meta Readies Fully Autonomous Ads, Moderna Rises on Next-Gen Covid-19 Vaccine Approval

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

Stock market update for June 2, 2025. This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown, your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Monday, June 2nd. In today's episode, we tell you what investors are looking forward to this week, including earnings and a big economic report on Friday. We also tell you why we're going to start seeing a lot more AI-made ads on Instagram and Facebook pretty soon. Then stick around to the end of this show to find out who the highest-paid CEO was in 2024. It's not who I thought. it would be. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Well, guys, stocks are coming off a pretty

chaotic week. You know, last week we had Nvidia earnings. There was the taco trade drama. And then, of course, we had more tariff uncertainty and whiplash. Remember last week, a federal trade court paused Trump's tariffs. And then 17 hours later in appeals court reinstated those tariffs. So now tariffs are tied up in some legal limbo. I mean, despite all of that, the market still finished last week higher with both the S&P NASDAQ jumping around 2%. Now, zooming out, May was a monster month for the stock market. The S&P 500 jumped 6.2%. The NASDAQ was up 9.6%.

That's the best month for these indices since November of 2023. Not bad for a month that has a reputation for not being so great. So we might need to update the old Wall Street adage of sell in May and go away to like buy in May and compound all. all day. I'm still workshopping that one. Now, we'll have to see if the rally continues into June because President Trump is back talking tough on tariffs. On Friday, he accused China of violating their trade agreement, and then he doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum, raising them from 25% to 50%. Now, that's pushing the stocks of American steel companies hired today. Cleveland

Cliff, New Corps, steel dynamics are all up more than 10% this morning. But these tariffs are going to complicate trade negotiations with the EU, which exports a ton of steel. to the U.S. I mean, they could retaliate and heat up the trade wars again. Remember, the EU as a whole is the U.S.'s largest trading partner. Now, looking ahead to this week, earnings season is pretty much over, but this week we are getting a ton of earnings from consumer companies. Companies like Dollar Tree, Dollar General, and Campbells are all reporting this week, and then we're also getting reports from retail investor favorites like CrowdStrike and Broadcom. So we have a decent week of earnings coming up, but what I'm looking forward to the most is the jobs report, which comes out on

Friday morning. Now, I feel like moving forward, this is going to be the most important economic report that investors pay attention to. That used to be inflation, but we know now that inflation is kind of back to the 2% range. So now investors are keeping an eye on the jobs market for any signs of weakness. And this is something the Federal Reserve looks at too when they make interest rate decisions. Remember, the Fed has a dual mandate to keep inflation low and employment high. So depending on how the jobs report goes this month and the next few months, that's going to have an impact on the Fed's decision when it comes to interest rates. So we'll see what the jobs report says on Friday. I know we're into June now when it's summer season, but we're still keeping an eye on the

market for you guys throughout the week and throughout the summer. I got a feeling this summer might get pretty chaotic, especially with those tariff deadlines coming up in July. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Meta. Mark Zuckerberg wants to turn every small business owner into Don Draper. According to the Wall Street Journal, Meta is working on a new suite of AI tools that can fully automate ad creation, and they're hoping to release it by next year. And I'm not just talking about tweaking headlines or cropping images. This thing will generate the entire ad campaign from scratch. Soon, businesses will be able to upload just a photo of a product

and tell the AI what their goal is with the campaign, like boosting sales or getting more clicks, and meta's AI will spit out the visuals, the copy, a video, and even tell you who to target. Businesses will be able to personalize the ad based, on the target audience. So for example, someone in California might see a sunglasses ad with a beach backdrop, while a user in Montana might see that same sunglasses ad, but on a mountain trail instead. So these tools could be a game changer for small and mid-sized businesses that don't have a big marketing team or budget to create tons of ads. The AI will do it all for you. And obviously this would be big for meta too, because if more businesses start paying for ads on

their platform, that means more revenue for them. So yeah, this is great news for meta investors. might not be so great for Instagram and Facebook users because pretty soon our Instagram feeds are going to be filled with 90% AI ads. I mean, I'm already getting so much AI generated content. Now our ads are going to be AI generated as well. Oh, it's just going to, things are going to get weird. Let's shift gears and talk about Tesla because there seems to be some internal confusion at Tesla on if they're actually going to move forward with making a $25,000 car or not. Multiple executives told Reuters that they were under the impression that Tesla had scratch, the budget EV, which they're calling the Model 2 internally at Tesla.

But that directly contradicts what Elon Musk posted on X back in April. A couple months ago, Reuters ran a story that the Model 2 was dead, but Elon responded to that on X saying that Reuters is lying. And this is a big deal because the Model 2 was supposed to be a budget-friendly vehicle that was going to unlock mass market domination for Tesla. But now nobody knows, including Tesla executives, if it's still happening. Now, what is happening, though, is Tesla is moving forward with, releasing cheaper versions of the Model 3 and Model Y.

We've already seen signs of this rollout in Norway. Tesla launched a more affordable Model Y over there, and sales jumped 213% in May. And deliveries to other European markets, including Germany, France, and the UK, are expected to begin in June. So we'll have to see if the Model 2 is still coming, but if Tesla has actually scrapped the Model 2,

then Elon's tweets from April could get him in some trouble from the SEC for misleading investors. But then again, that's really nothing new for Elon. I feel like he gets in trouble with the SEC at least every other year. You guys remember when he did the funding secured tweet from back in 2018, where he promised that Tesla was going to go private? So yeah, he kind of has a history with the SEC. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.

Moderna shares are climbing this morning after the FDA approved its latest COVID-19 vaccine called M-Nex spike. Didn't know they were still making COVID vaccines. Now, this shot is authorized for adults 65 and older, as well as people between the ages of 12 to 64, with at least one underlying health risk, according to CDC guidelines. Now, Moderna CEO emphasized that COVID still remains a serious public health threat, pointing to the 47,000 U.S. deaths from COVID in 2024. Madonna says their new vaccine will be ready for the 2025-2020s, respiratory virus season.

So investors are buying up the stock this morning. Another winner this morning is the German biotech company Bio-NTech. Their shares are up more than 10% this morning after the company announced an $11.1 billion licensing deal with Bristol-Myers Squib. The two companies are teaming up to develop a next-gen cancer immunotherapy drug, which is a big swing for both companies. See, pharma giants have been racing to bulk up their cancer drug pipeline, and the global immunoanconology market is expected to hit $60 billion by 2027. And right now, the leader in that is Merck with their KTrunda drug.

So BioNTech, along with Bristol-Myers Squib, are trying to get into the space as well. You know, these biotech stocks are always so confusing to me. But hey, you can learn more about the stock on the public app under ticker symbol BNTX. Now, a stock that I am familiar with is Rivian. Their shares are going down this morning after the EV startup announced a $1.25 billion secured notes offering. Essentially, they're borrowing more money to pay down old debt that's coming due in 26.

According to Rivian's latest balance sheet, it shows $4.7 billion in cash, but also $4.4 billion in long-term debt. So while they're not in immediate trouble, investors aren't thrilled about the more borrowing. As a result, shares of Rivian are down more than 2% this morning on this news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. The highest paid CEO of 2024 wasn't someone running a big tech company or a hedge fund. It was a guy running a taser company. Axon Enterprise CEO, Rick Smith, topped the list of the highest paid CEO taking home a whopping $165 million last year,

according to a new analysis from the Wall Street Journal. That made him the only S&P 500 CEO to clear nine figures in total comp. Now, like most CEOs, Rick Smith's pay was mostly tied to stock awards and not just salary. So he's not getting $165 million in cash. He's getting a lot of axon stock. An axon stock was up 130% last year. Now a bonus fun fact, 2024 marks the fewest CEOs making nine figures since 2016. That was kind of a surprise to me, to be honest. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. By the way, if you guys enjoy our show and have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or

Spotify. And if you're 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. And if you guys are looking for some bonus content to listen to, check out our weekend deep dive episode that we did about NVIDIA and how they're probably the most important company in the world right now. Give that one a listen and let us know what you think. 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.