The Rundown - Neuralink's Brain Implant, GM's Earnings Win

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Stock market update for January 30, 2024. The first human received an implant from Neuralink (Elon Musk) GM reports Q4 sales and profit beat, issues improved profit outlook but admits EV pace has slowed (Yahoo Finance) UPS to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Bring Workers in Five Days a Week (Bloomberg) ‘Suits’ Beats ‘The Office’ Streaming Record in 2023 (Variety) The content of the podcast is for general and informational purposes only. All views presented in this show reflect the opinions of the guest and the host. You should not take a mention of any asset, be it cryptocurrency or a publicly traded security as a recommendation to buy, sell or hold that cryptocurrency or security. Guests and hosts are not affiliated with or endorsed by Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. You should make your own financial and investment decisions or consult respective professionals. Full disclosures are in the channel description. Learn more at Public.com/disclosures. Past performance is not a guarantee of future results. There is a possibility of loss with any investment. Historical or hypothetical performance results, if mentioned, are presented for illustrative purposes only. Do not infer or assume that any securities, sectors or markets described in the videos were or will be profitable. Any statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements are strictly based on the current views, opinion, or assumptions of the person presenting them, and should not be taken as an indicator of performance nor should be relied upon as an investment advice.

Welcome to the rundown, your daily market update in under five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Tuesday, January 30th. In today's episode, we dive into the earnings of GM and UPS. Spoiler alert, one was great, and the other was not. We also talk about computer chips being implanted into brains, and then we end the show with some fun stats about streaming. All right, let's get into it. Let's first start with a quick recap of the stock market.

We had a strong start to the week for the stock market. The Dow and S&P both making record highs on Monday again. You know, I'm probably never going to get tired of saying that. Now, as I said on yesterday's show, the rally is all about tech. Microsoft and Mehta both hit all-time highs yesterday. And remember, both of these companies are reporting earnings this week. Microsoft is reporting earnings today after market close. Really excited for that.

And meta is reporting on Thursday after the close. And because these big tech companies are having such a huge influence on the stock market, if one of these companies have a bad earnings, it could drag the entire market down with it. So I'm definitely going to be paying close. attention to these earnings. Overall, it's been a pretty solid month for the stock market. Stocks are on track for the third positive month in a row, unless, you know, we get some sort of epic sell-off over the next two days. Really hope I didn't jinx anything. Today seems to be a bit of a

mixed day. The Dow and S&P are in the green while the NASDAQ is in the red at the time of this recording around noon Eastern. Now, as I said in the intro, we're going to cover earnings from GM and UPS, but before we do that, I wanted to talk about a quick headline that I saw yesterday. I'm not sure if I should be impressed or scared, or probably both. The headline was that Elon Musk's company, NeurLink, has successfully implemented a chip in a human. Neurlink is a company that Elon Musk founded, and their goal is to allow humans to control things like computers and phones just using your brain. So like forget touch screens and trackpads.

If Neurrelink is successful, you'll one day be able to control your phone with just your thoughts. It's pretty cool, I guess. And Neurlink got approval to start human trials in September. And four months later, they just completed their first implant. My initial reaction is like, yeah, this is pretty cool. Being able to swipe on TikTok without having to move my thumbs? Great. But on the other hand, this also opens up the door to, like, a lot of other things that could happen.

Like, imagine 20 years from now being served an ad directly into your brain. Right now, trials are being tested on paraplegics. And if it's successful, it should result in a huge quality of life upgrade for people that have been paralyzed. And for that use case, I'm super excited about it. It's just the other stuff that makes me a little nervous. By the way, diving into, like, the business side of Neurrelink, it's still a privately owned company, and they were last valued at $5 billion. last summer. And if these implants are successful, you can imagine the hype around the company

is going to continue to build. So Elon's out here still doing his thing. All right, let's talk about some stocks making moves today. We're going to start with GM. GM stock is a big winner today. The stock is up more than 6% at the time of this recording after they reported better than expected Q4 earnings. So let's dive into these earnings and see why the stock is jumping. GM beat earnings on top line and bottom line. That's a fancy way of saying that their revenues came in higher than expected and their earnings came in higher than expected. GM reported revenues of 40, $3 billion in Q4 and earnings of $1.24 a share. But that wasn't the only good news.

GM also reported a positive outlook for their business in 2024. So pretty solid earnings for GM, but not everything was great. GM did report a slowdown in EV sales, and they also don't expect that their EVs to be profitable until 2025. But they're not totally backing down from EVs. They announced plans for more productions of plug-in hybrids, which GM thinks will have more appeal in the United States. GM is also having issues with their cruise autonomous driving division.

Cruise at the pause operations last year after the Robotaxie ran over a woman in San Francisco last October. But overall, investors seem to be happy with GM, which is why it's one of the best performing stocks in the S&P 500 today. So now let's move on to a company that's not doing so hot today. UPS stock is down more than 8% at the time of this recording around noon Eastern after reporting weaker than expected Q4 earnings. The earnings were pretty brutal. UPS reported drops in volumes, revenues, and operating profit, all three. So it's no surprise to see why their stock is down 8% right now. Their revenues came in lower than what Wall Street was expecting, dropping more than 7% compared to a year before.

So UPS is trying to turn around their business this year, and they're starting off by planning to cut 12,000 jobs, about 14% of their workforce, which they say will help the company save about $1 billion in costs. And on top of that, they've also asked their workers to come into the office five days a week. Yeah, that'll totally solve the problem. Again, it's never fun to talk about people being laid off, but unfortunately, it seems to be a trend so far this year. All right, let's wrap the show with a segment that I call Stocking Stuffer, where I share a fun for, fact about stocks, the economy, or anything that I found to be interesting. Feel free to use this next time you find yourself in a small talk situation. Today's fun fact has to do with streaming.

According to data from Nielsen's, the most streamed show in 2023 was Suits, thanks in large part to Netflix. They pretty much turned that show into a viral hit. Suits hasn't been on air since 2019, but as soon as it landed on Netflix, it became the most watch show of the year. In fact, it was so popular that it now holds the record for most stream show in a single year. The previous record holder was the office in 2020. By the way, the second most stream show of 2023 was Bluey.

Those of you with young kids listening to this probably aren't surprised at all to hear that. It might be my favorite children's show. Shout out to Bluey. All right, that's all I got for you guys today. Remember, today we're getting earnings from Microsoft, AMD, and Google after the market closes. I'll be diving into those earnings in tomorrow's episodes. So make sure you're tuning in. All right, I'll see you guys back here tomorrow.

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