The Rundown - Musk Buys $1B in Tesla Stock, China Accuses Nvidia of Breaking Anti-Monopoly Law

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Stock market update for September 15, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Monday, September 15. In today's episode, we'll preview this upcoming week, including a Fed meeting and the TikTok band. We'll also tell you why China just said that NVIDIA violated antitrust law and a move by Elon Musk that is sending Tesla stock soaring. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out a crazy fact about Jensen and AMD CEO Lisa Sue. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Markets are coming off another winning week. The S&P 500 climbed 1.6% last week and the NASDAQ added 2%. Both of these indices are sitting at record highs right now with the S&P writing a six-week win streak. The markets continue to rally because investors are expecting the Federal Reserve to finally cut rates at this week's meeting. I think a 25 basis point cut feels locked in at this point, despite inflation still being above the Fed's 2% target. The bigger concern right now for the Fed is the labor market. All of the recent data and revisions coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the labor market is weakening, and the Fed doesn't want that to get worse. So we're going to get a rate cut this week.

And what I'm looking forward to the most is the Fed's updated dot plot, which is a chart that shows where each voting member of the Fed expects interest rates to be at the end of this year. year and beyond. This dot plot will give investors an idea how many rate cuts the Fed plans to do the rest of this year. So yeah, this Fed meeting is going to be a pretty big one. It starts on Tuesday and wraps up on Wednesday afternoon with a Jerome Powell Press conference. You know, as always, the market is going to be hanging on every one of his words. I'm going to be tuning in and we're going to be talking about this throughout the week. So make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. Now, the other thing that I'm watching this week is the TikTok ban. Now, remember, TikTok was supposed to be banned in the U.S. back in January.

because of a bipartisan bill that passed last year. But a President Trump extended the ban three times already with the latest deadline set for September 17th. That's this Wednesday. And according to a truth social post by President Trump just now, a TikTok deal might have finally been reached with China. Trump said he's expecting to speak to Chinese president Xi Jinping about this on Friday.

You know, TikTok is owned by the Chinese company Bike Dance. And the U.S. law states that TikTok cannot be majority owned by a Chinese company in order to continue operating in the U.S. But a sale of TikTok and its algorithm to an American company would require the approval of the Chinese government. So that's what made all this complicated and dragging out for months now. U.S. and Chinese officials have been in Madrid for the past couple of days, negotiating everything from trade and this TikTok ban.

So we might finally have a deal. There have been rumors for months now that Oracle was going to be the one that buys TikTok, which would be huge and just add to the insane year that Oracle has had so far. We don't have any official details on the deal just yet. We'll keep you guys in the loop as soon as we get more information. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with NVIDIA. China has accused NVIDIA for violating antitrust law.

This goes back to NVIDIA's $7 billion acquisition of Melanox back in 2020, which Chinese regulators originally approved. Melanox is an Israeli tech company that makes networking gear for data centers, and when China originally approved this deal years ago, it came with strings attached, mainly that Nvidia had to promise not to discriminate against Chinese companies. Now, fast forward five years later, Beijing is saying that Nvidia broke those rules. Chinese regulators haven't spelled out exactly how Nvidia violated the terms, just saying that they did and they're going to keep investigating. The timing of all this is probably not a coincidence because over the weekend,

China said it was launching an anti-dumping investigation targeting certain American semiconductor companies. We're going to talk more about that in a bit. As I said earlier, U.S. and Chinese trade officials are meeting in Madrid this week to discuss. trade and a bunch of other stuff. So this is a way for China to create some leverage in their negotiations by launching investigations into the U.S. chip companies. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, they just continue to get caught in the middle of it. The U.S. government restricted NVIDIA's most advanced AI chips from being exported to China. At the same time, the Chinese government is telling Chinese tech companies to avoid NVIDIA chips altogether and pushing them to local chip makers like Huawei, and now you have even further

escalation. Obviously not great news for NVIDIA investors. NVIDIA stock is down around 2% this morning. But if we get some sort of resolution announced in Madrid this week, that could potentially cause the stock to pop. So we're definitely keeping an eye on all the news coming out of Madrid. We might have to hop on the next flight to Madrid. And yes, I'm trying to find an excuse to go to Spain here. Let's shift gears and talk about Elon Musk. Elon just bought a billion dollars worth of Tesla stock on Friday. And that news is sending Tesla stocks soaring this morning. You know, Elon hasn't bought Tesla stock since 2020. and when he did, it was only $10 million. So this $1 billion buy is a massive step up.

And traders are reading it as a big show of confidence that Elon has in the company. And that's why Tesla stock is up more than 7% this morning on this news. Now remember, the Tesla Board of Directors has proposed a $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk that shareholders will vote on in November. If that pay package gets approved, that deal would give Elon Musk a max of 423 million Tesla shares unlocking 1% additional ownership every time he adds a half a trillion dollars for the company's market cap. That goes all the way up to $8.5 trillion. Right now, Tesla is valued at around $1.3 trillion. So there's a lot of road to cover here.

And don't forget the Tesla board of directors already approved a separate $30 billion pay package plan in August. That gives Elon another 96 million shares if he sticks around as CEO for two more years. So the Tesla board of directors is throwing money at Elon to stick around as CEO. And I think this $1 billion share. buyback is a nod to Tesla investors to show that he's focused on the company moving forward. Now, I think the only way that Tesla gets to the $8 trillion levels is if Elon's bet on robotaxis and humanoid robots actually pay off. He's not going to get there by selling EVs. So we'll see what happens. The shareholder vote on the $1 trillion pay package is scheduled for

November 6th at Tesla's annual shareholder meeting. I got a feeling they're going to end up approving the pay package. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Gemini are still flying after its IPO last week. Shares of the crypto exchange jumped 14% on its first day of trading on Friday, and the rally has not cooled off yet. The stock is up another 5% this morning. You know, crypto IPOs have been hot lately. The other crypto company to IPO last week was Figgered technology,

which is a blockchain lending company. It surged more than 40% when it went public. We actually did a deep dive episode on Figuereger this past weekend and how the company is changing the home loan and financial service. industry using blockchain technology. It's a pretty interesting company. Highly recommend checking out that deep dive if you want to learn more. Now, on the flip side, chip stocks are down across the board after China launched the anti-dumping investigation into U.S. chip companies shortly after the U.S. added 23 additional Chinese companies to its restricted list. China says they're

investigating the analog chip space to see if they're charging unfairly low prices. China investigating whether American companies are charging unfairly low prices just sounds funny to me. Analog chips are the kind that are used in cars, phones, radios, and medical devices. They're not the high-tech fancy ones that you see in AI supercomputers, but they are important. And that's bad news for analog chip makers like Texas instruments and analog devices whose stocks are sliding this morning on this news. So you can add this to the list of things that U.S. and Chinese trade officials need to discuss in Madrid this week. Probably not a lot of siesta is happening on both sides. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and AMD CEO Lisa Sue are distant cousins. Jensen Huang's mom is the sister of Lisa Sue's maternal grandfather. So that makes them first cousins once removed. I think I have that right. Now, while both of them were born in Taiwan, they didn't actually grow up together. Like, they didn't know each other as kids. In fact, they met each other for the first time at a chip industry event. Imagine showing up to a work event and realizing that your biggest competitor is a fan.

family member that you didn't even know about. So yeah, I just find the fact that two of the biggest chip CEOs are related and leading the most important companies in the world right now. I got to say, though, both of them definitely got the charismatic genes from the family tree. That's for sure. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like seven extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you 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. 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. Frozen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes. Sounds like Ojo time. Let's play.

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