The Rundown - Meta Shares Drop on Aggressive AI spending, Chipotle's Stock Plummets on Weak Demand
Episode Date: October 30, 2025Stock market update for October 30, 2025.Follow us on Instagram @therundowndaily�...�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.
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Public.com presents the rundown.
Your daily market update in under 10 minutes.
My name is Zad Admani, and today is Thursday, October 30th.
In today's episode, we'll recap all the drama from the Fed meeting and why we might not get a rate cut in December.
We'll also recap earnings from Google, Microsoft, and meta.
Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how fast NVIDIA went from a $4 trillion company to hitting $5 trillion.
We got a great show for you today.
Let's go.
Stocks are coming off a wild day of trading yesterday thanks to the Fed meeting.
The S&P 500 ultimately end of the day flat, and the NASDAQ managed to gain 0.6% thanks again to tech stocks.
Now, there was a moment yesterday where the markets tanked thanks to our boy Jerome Powell.
It all started with the Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points, putting the Fed funds,
rate to between 3.75 and 4%. Now, that move by the Fed was expected. No surprise there. The surprise came
after the decision during Jerome Powell's press conference. See, going into the day, the markets were
pricing in a 90% chance of another rate cut in December. But Jerome Powell threw cold water all over
that idea, saying the December rate cut is far from a foregone conclusion. And look, as soon as
those words came out of his mouth, the markets tanked for a few minutes. Investors did quickly buy the
dip and stocks recovered by the end of the trading day. Kind of wild, they're not even Jerome Powell
can stop this AI-powered bull run. I think investors are still expecting the Fed to cut interest rates
at the next meeting because remember, the Fed's job is to keep inflation low and employment high.
To be fair, the Fed isn't a tricky spot right now. Inflation is still at 3% and climbing because of
tariffs. Plus, the Fed doesn't have all the recent economic data from the government regarding inflation
in the labor market because of the government shutdown. The Fed is partially flying blind right now. So I can
see why Jerome Powell was pumping the brakes on a December rate cut. But in the press conference
yesterday, Jerome Powell himself said that if you remove the one-time impact of tariffs,
inflation would be at around 2.3%, which is pretty close to the Fed's 2% target. Plus, with all
the recent headlines of companies laying off thousands of workers, I doubt the Fed wants to be behind
the curve and risk a weaker job market. So I think the Fed will still cut rates in December. In fact,
as of this morning, the markets are still pricing in a 70% chance of a 20% chance of a 20% of a
25 basis point cut at the December meeting.
So we'll have to see what happens.
I mean, maybe a rate cut doesn't even matter anymore
with the entire market just focused on AI.
But let me know in the comments
on what you guys think the Fed will do at the December meeting.
Let's run through some headlines.
And we're talking big tech earnings,
starting with Google.
Google just put up record numbers in Q3
with the company having its first $100 billion quarterly revenue.
Sales were up 16% year.
over a year to $102 billion and profits were up 33% to nearly $35 billion.
The big growth engine for Google was their Google Cloud division, which brought in $15.2 billion
in revenue, which is up 34% from last year.
And a big reason for that growth was AI.
Over 70% of Google Cloud customers are now using AI tools.
And CEO Sundar Pichai said the company has signed more billion dollar cloud deals this
year than in the previous two years combined. So Google Cloud continues to be a huge growth engine,
but with all this AI demand, Google is having to spend more money to build out their AI infrastructure.
The company now projects CAPEX spending to be around $92 billion for 2025, which is almost
double what it was last year. The company expects another increase in CAPEX spending for
2026. Most of this money is going towards building AI data centers and training their AI models.
Now, outside of cloud, Google continues to crush it in other areas. Their AI chat,
but Gemini continues to gain traction, now boasting 650 million monthly active users up from the
450 million last quarter. On top of that, Google's search revenue grew by 15% year over year to
$56.6 billion. And Google ad sales also topped $10 billion. So all in all, Google is firing on
all cylinders. And all that chatter from earlier this year of chat GPT and AI destroying Google's
business, that's all gone away now. In fact, I think it's safe to say that Google seems to be the
clear winner and maybe even the leader of the AI boom. Investors' stores seem to see it that way now.
Google stock is up more than 5% this morning and the stock just hit another record high.
Now let's shift to Microsoft. They also reported earnings last night and they had a strong quarter,
but their stock actually took a hit because investors are getting a bit nervous on all the
AI spend by the company. Revenues for Microsoft came in at $77.7 billion, up 18% year over year,
easily topping expectations. And the big driver once again was Microsoft Azure, which is their cloud
business. That saw revenues jump 39% outpacing rivals like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services.
But the headline that grabbed Wall Street's attention wasn't the revenue. It was all the
spending coming from Microsoft. Microsoft's CapEx hit a record $34.9 billion in Q3. And CFO Amy Hood
said that number will keep climbing through next year. That's a sharp reversal from what Microsoft said
earlier this year where they expected spending to cool off. I think it's those comments that
caused Microsoft stock to drop around 3% this morning. It's just funny how markets work, though.
Google pretty much said the same thing as Microsoft, but their stock went up while Microsoft's
stock is going down. Now, that might be because Google has a leading edge AI model, so all
their spending might be justified, while Microsoft is using Open AI's model as part of their
partnership with the company. Overall, though, I'd say that Microsoft is still crushing it,
but investors are just being a bit more cautious when it comes to the AI spend. And that
brings us to meta. Meta also logged a record third quarter with revenues topping $51.2 billion.
It's the first time the company has crossed the $50 billion mark in a single quarter.
But despite the earnings beat, meta stock is down more than 10% this morning after the company said it plans to spend more than $70 billion this year on AI infrastructure.
That is more than double what they spent last year and it makes up about 37% of total projected revenue.
So that clearly freaked out the investors.
Now, CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to calm nerves saying that meta is seeing the returns
from their AI investment, which includes new recommendation systems for their ads,
the Lama AI model, and their meta rayman smart glasses.
But Wall Street's not buying it.
Meta said that its CAPEX will keep rising into 2026.
And analysts are now questioning how all this spending will translate into new revenue streams
beyond just ads.
You know, meta's ads business continues to be strong.
It's up 26% year over year.
but its Reality Labs Division posted another $4 billion loss.
And despite all the hype around meta's smart glasses, which are pretty cool,
they're not going to sell nearly enough of those to justify all the AI spend.
So I wonder if Zuck will just inject more ads into our Instagram feed in the short term to make Wall Street happy
while he spends billions of dollars to reach superintelligence.
I think the overall takeaway is that investors are now finally asking companies that justify the massive AI spend.
And if there's no clear pathway for more revenue,
then investors are getting nervous and selling off the stock.
Let's talk about some stocks making moves today.
Eli Lilly is seeing a nice jump today after the pharma giant crushed earnings expectations
thanks to massive demand for its weight loss and diabetes drugs.
Revenues from their diabetes drug Manjaro more than doubled to $6.5 billion.
And sales of Zepin, which is their weight loss drugs,
surged more than 184% year over year,
to $3.6 billion.
Overall revenues for the company jumped 54% from last year to $17.6 billion, and profits came
in way above expectations as well.
Eli Lilly expects demand to stay strong.
The company actually raised their full year guidance for both sales and profits, and as a result,
the stock is up more than 4% this morning at the time of this recording.
Now, on the flip side, let's talk Chipotle.
Their stock is getting absolutely smoked this morning after the company cut its sales outlook
for the year. Chipotle now expects same store sales to shrink slightly in 2025, which is a big
downgrade from their earlier guidance, which called for growth. Chipotle said that traffic to their
restaurants fell for the third straight quarter, and the company is blaming the economy for the
downgrade, saying that customers are eating out less, especially younger customers, and those
earning $100,000 or less a year, which makes of about 40% of Chipotle's customer base. It probably
doesn't help that Chipotle's quality has also gone way downhill while getting more expensive at the same
time. So yeah, Chipotle is feeling the squeeze and their stock is down nearly 20% today in reaction to the earnings.
Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. It took Nvidia just 78 trading days to go from a $4 trillion
valuation to hitting $5 trillion for the first time. That's the fastest $1 trillion market cap jump in history.
For some context, it took Nvidia over a year to go from a $3 trillion valuation to a $4 trillion.
So it's a great example of the AI trade just continuing to heat up.
Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today.
Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode.
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Thank you guys so much 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.
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